Excerpt­ed from “Churchill as Speak­er: Back-Up Scripts and Pre-speech Jit­ters,” writ­ten for the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project. For the orig­i­nal arti­cle with end­notes and oth­er images, click here. To sub­scribe to week­ly arti­cles from Hills­dale-Churchill, click here, scroll to bot­tom, and enter your email in the box “Stay in touch with us.” We nev­er spam you and your iden­ti­ty remains a rid­dle wrapped in a mys­tery inside an enigma.

A note by Sir Martin Gilbert

In 1972 I was invit­ed to tea with Prime Min­is­ter Edward Heath in the gar­den of 10 Down­ing Street. It was the first and only time I sat in that garden.

The Prime Min­is­ter was accom­pa­nied by his Polit­i­cal Sec­re­tary. At one point Heath asked me how Churchill pre­pared his speech­es, how did his speech­writ­ers work? I inter­rupt­ed keen­ly to say that Churchill did not use speech­writ­ers, but dic­tat­ed all his own speech­es, even on occa­sion writ­ing them out in longhand.

As I spoke, I noticed the young man go some­what red, and Heath look a lit­tle put out. I real­ized at once that I was in the pres­ence not only of a prime min­is­ter but of a speech­writer. Twen­ty years lat­er the young man, Dou­glas Hurd, was For­eign Sec­re­tary. 

The Churchill method

If not Sir Edward Heath, most of his admir­ers know Sir Win­ston did not use speech­writ­ers. We are some­times asked: Did he speak from a writ­ten text? Was he afraid of speak­ing extempore?

One arti­cle declared that “even after giv­ing hun­dreds of pub­lic speech­es, WSC still admit­ted to “but­ter­flies in the stom­ach” just before he was about to speak.

Soon the young Win­ston learned not to make a speech with­out a text handy. Ear­ly on, he would com­mit each ora­tion to mem­o­ry. But in April 1904, he lost his place in mid-speech and sat down embar­rassed. To encour­age him, he was cheered from both sides of the aisle.

Today’s pol­i­tics are less col­le­gial. Live tele­vi­sion broad­casts, while shed­ding wel­come light on the work­ings of gov­ern­ment, encour­age play­ing to the cam­era. A floun­der­ing speak­er is not treat­ed so courteously.

“When I ‘Dried Up’”

Churchill wrote of this dis­con­cert­ing expe­ri­ence in a 1934 essay, “When I ‘Dried Up.’” He recalled with plea­sure how col­leagues offered him “the great­est patience and kind­ness.” Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the essay was nev­er reprinted—not even in the mar­velous Col­lect­ed Essays. A tran­script is avail­able elec­tron­i­cal­ly to any read­er who cares to email [email protected].

After that expe­ri­ence, “dis­con­cert­ing to the last degree,” Churchill was nev­er a speak­er with­out a text—typed out and triple spaced in “Speech Form,” as sec­re­taries called it, the indi­vid­ual lines bro­ken out and indent­ed as he planned to recite them, like vers­es in a psalm.

“An hour of prep per minute of delivery”

Each speech was a prod­uct of great pains. The late Lord Soames, his Par­lia­men­tary Pri­vate Sec­re­tary in the ear­ly 1950s, explained how much trou­ble Churchill took:

It worked out to be an hour of prepa­ra­tion per minute of deliv­ery, and it was noth­ing for him but hard work. Then came the skill of pre­tend­ing, of look­ing as if it was com­ing off the top of his head.

He knew how to read with­out look­ing as if he wasn’t. In those days there wasn’t this love­ly machine that we’ve all got now, which allows you to read your speech while look­ing around the hall. He had to look as if he was not reading—and sound as if he wasn’t.

Churchill was an excel­lent speak­er because he loved the clas­sics, which informed his com­po­si­tion. His vast sub-text was com­piled through exten­sive read­ing, led by Shake­speare and the Bible. His capa­cious mem­o­ry enabled him to fish up exact­ly the right quo­ta­tion to bedi­zen his points. But it was all care­ful­ly rehearsed.

He was not a good ad lib­ber, but often stowed away a good line for the right moment. One evening, after he had fired off a potent retort to some par­lia­men­tary crit­ic, Lord Mount­bat­ten asked him how he man­aged to come up with such dev­as­tat­ing ripostes. “Patience, Dick­ie,” the great man smiled. “I’ve been wait­ing years to get that one off.”

Speaker jitters

By con­trast, Sir Mar­tin Gilbert need­ed no writ­ten text. He would often arrive with a sheaf of foolscap, each sheet bear­ing a scrawled line or two. Glanc­ing at one, he would lay it aside, ad-lib flaw­less­ly for ten min­utes, take up anoth­er sheet and repeat the process. But Sir Mar­tin was ner­vous before a speech. So was Churchill, accord­ing to Lord Soames:

Soon after Win­ston returned from the Boer War he went up to Liv­er­pool, very much in the thick of things. An aspir­ing politi­cian, he went to address an enor­mous gath­er­ing. He stayed with the Lord Der­by of the day, Eddie Der­by, and they rode in a car­riage togeth­er the few miles into Liverpool.

Now Win­ston was very qui­et, as near­ly every­one is when they are brood­ing and have a speech await­ing. Lord Der­by, who was near­ly three times Winston’s age, turned to him and said, “Are you ner­vous, Winston?”

“Am I? Hell, I’m ner­vous as any­thing, I sure am,” Win­ston replied.

“Let me give you a tip,” said Lord Der­by. “When I get up to make a speech, I look around the hall and I say to myself: ‘I’ve nev­er in my life seen, gath­ered togeth­er in one room, so many bloody awful look­ing peo­ple!’ And then I go right off!”

If Win­ston Churchill ever told him­self that about an audi­ence before a speech, it was nev­er evident.

Foreign pronunciation

For­eign lan­guages were some­thing with which Churchill noto­ri­ous­ly strug­gled. Whether because he couldn’t get his tongue around them, or because he dis­dained prop­er pro­nun­ci­a­tion, he hard­ly ever tried to get them right.

Unlike mod­ern news­cast­ers and some politi­cians, he saw no rea­son to patron­ize for­eign­ers by overem­pha­siz­ing their pro­nun­ci­a­tion. In fact, he worked very hard to angli­cize words that par­tic­u­lar­ly annoyed him.

He frowned on name changes, like “Iran” for Per­sia or “Ankara” for Ango­ra. In 1939 the Roy­al Navy cor­nered the Ger­man bat­tle­ship Graf Spee off the Uruguayan capital—whose name Churchill stu­dious­ly pro­nounced as “Mon­ty-vid­dy-oh.” One won­ders how he’d react to “Latine,” which Axios tells us is now the pre­ferred gen­der-neu­tral way to refer to Latinos.

“Bad luck,” WSC declared in 1945, “always pur­sues peo­ple who change the name of their cities. For­tune is right­ly malig­nant to those who break with the tra­di­tions and cus­toms of the past.” Britons, he said, should stand forth­right­ly behind Angli­cized nomenclature:

If we do not make a stand we shall in a few weeks be asked to call Leghorn Livorno, and the BBC will be pro­nounc­ing Paris “Paree.” For­eign names were made for Eng­lish­men, not Eng­lish­men for for­eign names. I date this minute from St. George’s Day.

Churchill as speak­er was devoid of fad­dish jar­gon. (Imag­ine what he would make of ver­nac­u­lar like “reach­ing out” (for “con­tact­ing”) or “issues” (for “prob­lems”).

He looked dif­fi­dent­ly upon the news­pa­pers, although he wrote for many. Towards indi­vid­ual jour­nal­ists he was mag­nan­i­mous. “Do not be afraid to crit­i­cise, young man,” he once told an over­awed edi­tor, “I am a pro­fes­sion­al jour­nal­ist.”⁶

Further reading

“Scaf­fold­ing Rhetoric: Churchill in Con­gress, 1941,” 2022.

“The Prob­lem with Record­ed Churchill Speech­es,” 2022.

“Churchill’s Prep for the Iron Cur­tain Speech,” 2019.

“Churchill at Har­vard in 1943,” 2023.