Ignore his politics, and even his principles, by all means. But to read Winston Churchill’s speeches today, and, better still, to hear his recordings of them, is to understand the astonishing power and mesmeric quality of self-belief. Younger men and women may mock all they wish but the iron determination and self-belief of this one old man, this old man with a BBC microphone, meant more to Britain at that moment than all the kings and queens in her long history. For just one moment, a democratic people were saved from fear of failure, and from the fear of fear itself; from the shame of
...more
