Historian Professor Richard Toye challenges the popular wisdom that Churchill’s wartime speeches were universally admired and played a decisive role in victory over Nazi Germany. Toye uses survey evidence and contemporary diaries to show they were often seen in a different light and says there is little evidence that they made a difference to people’s will to fight on. In fact, he says there was considerable dissent alongside the mass enthusiasm. While some speeches excited the masses, some caused depression and disappointment in many. Toye looks at how the speeches were written and delivered and at their successes and failures.

Toye is professor of modern history at the University of Exeter and also author of Lloyd George and Churchill: Rivals for Greatness, and Churchill’s Empire: The World that Made Him and the World He Made.