“How many speeches did Churchill make, and in how many words? Also, how many words did he write in his books and articles? [Updated from 2014.]

Word counts

Through the wonders of computer science (Ian Langworth and the Hillsdale College Churchill Project), we know that the present corpus of works by and about Winston S. Churchill exceeds 80 million words (380 megabytes). This includes 20 million (120 megabytes) by Churchill himself (counting his letters, memos and papers in the 23 volumes of Churchill Documents. Here are his the top word counts among his books:

The Churchill Documents: 10,000,000*

Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches 1897-1963: 5,200,000

The Second World War: 1,600,000 (not counting appendices)

The Collected Essays of Sir Winston Churchill: 860,000

The World Crisis: 824,000

Marlborough: His Life and Times: 779,000 (not counting appendices)

A History of the English-Speaking Peoples: 510,000 (not counting appendices)

Lord Randolph Churchill: 278,000

The River War: 200,000

*Total word count for the twenty-three volumes is 15.3 million; we estimate 10 million are WSC’s own words.

Word count: speeches

To be precise you’d have to count (I won’t!) the speeches listed in the Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches 1897-1963. Rough estimate: there are forty speeches per page of contents, about eight contents pages per volume, and eight volumes. So, at a guess, 2500 speeches.

But the Complete Speeches are not complete. Try to find his famous Durban speech after escaping from the Boers in 1899, for example. And some are only excerpts—as from his lecture tours of North America. Also, you must deduct notes by editors. But let’s add say 10% for missing speeches and guess that he made about 3000 in all.

The 5.2 million-word Complete Speeches, at eight volumes, is the longest book-length “work by Churchill.” Subtract 100,000 words of introductions and add missing speeches or verbiage. Let’s estimate six million words of speeches alone.

Official Biography

Some readers also ask about word counts for the Official Biography. The total for the eight biographic volumes is over 3,000,000 words. The twenty-three Companion or Document Volumes  add 15.3 million, for a grand total of over 18 million words (80+ megabytes). Of course, these include many million words not by Churchill.

Someone once told Sir Martin Gilbert,  “You’ve only published one-tenth of Churchill’s story!” Sir Martin replied: “Really? That much?”

Digital capacity

This doesn’t impress software engineers, but it does me: A single, old fashioned 250 gigabyte hard drive disk would hold over 1800 copies of all Churchill’s words and all the words in the Official Biography.

A modern hard drive holds about 3 terrabytes (3000 gigabytes). Therefore, your personal computer could house about 200,000 copies of Churchill’s works and the Official Biography.

What would Sir Winston Churchill make of this? No one can say, except to remember one of his maxims: “Words are the only things that last forever.”

Can you direct me to a set of the “Collected Works” of Winston Churchill? I suspect they are pricey and rare. So how do I build a collection of Churchill at a reasonable price? —G.S., Maine, USA

Collected Works and Essays

You refer to the Collected Works of Sir Winston Churchill, 40 volumes including four volumes of Collected Essays. It was published by the Library of Imperial History in London in 1974-75. (The Diner’s Club produced another collection of Major Works, but they were not complete.)

These books are discussed elsewhere on this website, and in my Connoisseur’s Guide to the Books of Sir Winston Churchill.

The “Collected Works” are expensive reprints. Nice sets of Churchill’s books can be put together with trade editions for much less, and the Churchill specialist booksellers have a broad listing.

Pros and cons

Nowadays hardly anyone can afford the Collected Works. Dubbed the “Centenary Limited Edition,” some 2000 sets were published in blatant pursuit of lucre. The story (recounted herein) is disappointing. Originals were bound in vellum, which tends to swell and warp, making them hard to remove from their slipcases.

In the 1990s I found and began binding several hundred remaining sheets in leather as well as vellum, but those too are now out of sight. Also, the general editor of the series, the late Fred Woods, edited many of the texts (making changes discussed in detail in the Connoisseur’s Guide), which makes them useless as a source of Churchill’s original words.

The great advantage of the enterprise was the four-volume Collected Essays, the only collection of Churchill’s periodical articles (other than those reprinted in his books) ever published in volume form, with a fine introduction by the late Michael Wolff.

Owing to popular demand the Essays were also issued in a half-blue leather “Centenary Edition,” which was sold separately. Sets sometimes surface in that form, but the Essays were never reprinted, and demand is high, forcing prices up accordingly. Alas, though I’ve tried to interest the publishers of limited editions from Easton Press to the Folio Society in reprinting the set, none has ever bitten the bullet.

Further reading

“The Sordid History of Churchill’s Collected Works,” 2023.

“Churchill’s Collected Essays, Invaluably Compiled by Michael Wolff,” 2023.