Churchill: The Great Orator podcast, episode 2: We Shall Fight Them on the Beaches
Our new podcast Churchill: The Great Orator explores Winston Churchill's life and career through his greatest speeches, revealing the inspiration behind the words that shaped the 20th century in interviews with leading historians, politicians and actors.
With insights into Churchill's personal and political struggles, as well as a close study of his distinctive rhythm and rhetoric, The Telegraph's comment editor Harry de Quetteville shines a new light on one of Britain's greatest statesmen.
In this episode, Harry de Quetteville visits Churchill's underground War Rooms to consider the most famous of his speeches, his address to the House of Commons on June 4, 1940, assuring them that Britain would never surrender, even if France fell to the Nazis. "It was the speeches that kept the whole of the population together," says Joy Hunter, who worked as a typist in the War Rooms until the very end of the Second World War. "There was a lot of dissent at the top," she reveals, but the power of Churchill's language inspired even his doubters to rally around him.
Darkest Hour, the Joe Wright-directed Churchill biopic starring Gary Oldman in the title role, is released on January 12.