Tag: BBC

The Problem with Recorded Churchill Speeches

The Problem with Recorded Churchill Speeches

Many who heard his original speeches said the subsequent broadcasts (and postwar recordings) lack the fire of the originals. Churchill did not particularly enjoy broadcasting, Harold Nicolson believed. Of his classic 18 June 1940 "Finest Hour" oration, Nicolson said: "He just sulked and read his House of Commons speech over again."

Read More Read More

Assault on Winston Churchill, 2018: A Reader’s Guide

Assault on Winston Churchill, 2018: A Reader’s Guide

Assault count: Since I am los­ing track, I thought it would be con­ve­nient to cre­ate an index to smears of Win­ston Churchill fol­low­ing the film Dark­est Hour. Note the sim­i­lar­i­ty of top­ics. Many writ­ers feed off each oth­er, repeat­ing the same dis­proven argu­ments. Nev­er do they check Churchill quotes or The Churchill Doc­u­ments —which prove them irre­triev­ably wrong. The order is most recent first. . Update for 2019 Assault of 29 March: The Ezine Scroll-in report­ed that Churchill’s poli­cies caused the drought that caused the Ben­gal Famine. (Not enough to be Prime Min­is­ter, he must also be a farmer, since he need­ed to know Irri­ga­tion.)…

Read More Read More

Churchill on the Broadcast

Churchill on the Broadcast

The ques­tion aris­es, has any­thing been writ­ten on Churchill’s radio tech­nique? Did he treat radio dif­fer­ent­ly from oth­er kinds of pub­lic speak­ing? How quick­ly did he take to the broadcast?

“The Art of the Microphone”

An excel­lent piece on this sub­ject was by Richard Dim­ble­by (1913-1965), the BBC’s first war cor­re­spon­dent and lat­er its lead­ing TV news com­men­ta­tor. His “Churchill the Broad­cast­er” is in Charles Eade, ed., Churchill by his Con­tem­po­raries (Lon­don: Hutchin­son, 1953). Old as it is, the book remains a com­pre­hen­sive set of essays of the many spe­cial­ized attrib­ut­es of WSC.

Dim­ble­by offers four areas of dis­cus­sion: the tech­ni­cal back­ground, the dra­ma of World War II, the fac­tu­al mate­r­i­al, and Churchill’s meth­ods of delivery.…

Read More Read More

RML Books

Richard Langworth’s Most Popular Books & eBooks

Links on this page may earn commissions.