Churchill’s ‘Finest Hour’: Calling Those Who Heard
Guest blog by Mim Harrison, Editor, Levenger Press
A note to our readers—
In order to have heard Prime Minister Winston Churchill deliver live over the radio what would become known to history as the “Finest Hour” speech, you would have had to be listening on 18 June 1940. A 12-year-old at the time would today be 80.
Most of those who were already waging war—or, in the United States, were soon to be fighting for the Allies—now have passed away. Before it is too late, we ask your help. If you know someone who heard the speech live, will you reach out to that person and ask what he or she remembers?
We would be most honored if you would share these stories from ear-witnesses, so we can help preserve and pass them on to others.
Our Levenger Press book, The Making of the Finest Hour, shows how Churchill crafted, edited and re-edited his famous speech, which you can hear on the CD that’s included. I’ve asked the editor of Levenger Press, Mim Harrison, to recount how the book came to life. She shares her recollections—including her own personal regret—in the story below.
—Steve
It was in the elegant dining room of London’s Royal Automobile Club, where one does not conduct business of any sort if one wishes to be invited back, that the idea of publishing a book about Sir Winston Churchill’s famous “Finest Hour” speech of 1940 first took hold. Levenger Press had just successfully published our second Churchill book in 2005, and we were eager to do more.
My host, a seasoned U.K. publisher of art books, felt Levenger could handily publish a book containing facsimile pages of Churchill’s “Finest Hour” speech drafts, along with a CD of his BBC radio broadcast. Because Levenger sells directly to readers, the book would be spared the rough-and-tumble of shelf life in bookstores.
Had we been in L.A., we probably would have mapped out the idea on a napkin and made a few calls on our mobiles. Instead, we sipped on liqueurs and ordered dessert.
Then I legged it back double-time to my not-so-elegant hotel, and madly scribbled down the many ideas we’d talked about before they vanished into the damp March air.
The making of the book
The Making of the Finest Hour took some doing to make. Good fortune was on our side, though. The great leader’s namesake and grandson, Winston Churchill, gave us a green light on the project. Churchill Archives, the repository of Sir Winston’s papers, produced superb facsimiles of the speech drafts—the first draft, marked up and redlined and crossed through and rewritten by Sir Winston himself; and then the final draft, on the smaller pieces of paper and typed in the specific line sequence that Churchill insisted on.
Visuals were a challenge. We didn’t want to use a photo of Churchill—too predictable. What, then? The answer came in one of those aha moments: his typewriter, of course, the noiseless Underwood his secretary used to type the speech. For that we sought the help of the staff at Chartwell, Churchill’s country home. They gamely tracked down the typewriter and took shot after shot until we had what we wanted.
The Churchill Centre’s Richard Langworth drew upon his encyclopedic knowledge of Churchill for his introduction. He capped it with a remarkable statement by Churchill’s daughter Mary about the way her father wrote speeches.
As for the radio broadcast—you would think it would be easy to get hold of Churchill’s historic BBC broadcast of 18 June 1940. But because of various issues surrounding ownership, rights and recording dates, it was a bit like groping through an English garden maze and hoping you’d eventually find your way out.
Eventually we did. Just to be sure we had what we were looking for, though, I went to the BBC offices in New York and asked my sales rep, Nelda Gil, to play the recording for me.
The call to a generation
Churchill’s “Finest Hour” speech was also one of Churchill’s finest hours. On 18 June 1940, most of Europe had succumbed to Hitler’s madness, leaving only Britain to fight. Churchill proved to be the free world’s secret weapon on a public stage, his genius for oratory being a galvanizing force first for the people of Britain, then for Americans as well.
But 18 June 1940 happened sixty-eight years ago—more than half a century. That time in our history is reaching its penumbra, passing daily out of living memory, as the number of people who heard Churchill’s speech live over the radio rapidly diminishes.
I am not of that generation—that Greatest Generation—but consider myself fortunate to be of parents who are. One of my uncles, career Army, fought in that war of Finest Hour. So did his daughter-in-law’s father, whom I met for the first time just as we were finishing The Making of the Finest Hour.
I showed him my working copy of the book, as I thought he might find it of interest. It was when I placed it in his hands that I realized it was, for him, more than a history book. It contained a part of his history.
Churchill had moved him to action as a soldier. Now Churchill moved him again, more than half a century later, almost to tears. The look of reverence on his face as he held that book is now a part of my history.
I made a mental note to send him a copy. But I waited too long, and like so many of his generation, he passed away.
From shared sacrifice to shared memory
Ken Burns once told an audience that the impetus for making his 2007 documentary of World War II, “The War,” was to honor that generation before it disappeared; approximately 1,000 WWII veterans were dying every week. He spoke with that remarkable passion of his of the “shared sacrifice” of that generation.
Each generation’s code is its own, perhaps never to be fully understood by another. But I would like to think that as long as Sir Winston’s “Finest Hour” is heard, some part of his generation, and my parents’ generation, will live in our shared memory.
I believe I caught a glimpse of this possibility on the bright December day I went to the BBC offices in New York, to meet Nelda and check the CD of the speech.
Nelda’s desk was one in a vast bullpen of desks, most inhabited by people of a still younger generation—twenty- and thirty-somethings who, by virtue of their job, were inured to hearing all kinds of recordings.
Nelda slid the CD into her machine, pressed play, the announcer said “Ladies and gentlemen, the Prime Minister,” and then there it was: Churchill’s voice, rising from more than half a century ago above the radio static.
The entire room went quiet. They stopped, and they listened, and I think it’s safe to say that more than one of those young people heard something they had not heard before.
One generation passes and another comes of age. And somewhere in that changing of the guard is the voice of a finest hour.
Do you have a Finest Hour memory to share? Just click on the Comments link below. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you'll connect to Comments). We will endeavor to share and preserve all stories as part of the living history surrounding this speech that meant much to the course of history.
—Steve
