Churchill: The Making of a Reluctant Hero
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 13 November 2025
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, by the time Winston Churchill became Prime Minister, he had already survived plane crashes, gunfire, and political exile. On the same morning Hitler invaded France, Churchill walked into Downing Street and said he felt as if he were “walking with destiny.”
In Churchill: Walking With Destiny, historian Sir Andrew Roberts brings the story to life with the speed and suspense of the time itself. From cavalry charges to the Battle of Britain, Roberts explains how Churchill’s scars, stubbornness, and belief in freedom turned him into the leader who refused to give up when Britain stood alone. Here's Roberts himself with the remarkable story of one of the most important men in history.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an IHeart podcast. |
| 0:02.6 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:14.1 | This is Lee Habib, and this is our American Stories, |
| 0:18.1 | the show where America is the star and the American people. |
| 0:22.4 | And you can go to I Heart Radio's app or wherever you get your podcast to listen to the show. |
| 0:28.5 | Speaking of a slightly American people, there are two British prime ministers with interesting |
| 0:34.3 | connections to our country. Boris Johnson was born in New York City, |
| 0:39.3 | so too was Winston Churchill's mother, |
| 0:41.7 | who was born more accurately, more precisely, in Brooklyn. |
| 0:46.2 | Here to tell the story of Churchill |
| 0:48.0 | is English historian Andrew Roberts, |
| 0:50.7 | the author of Churchill Walking with Destiny. |
| 0:54.0 | Take it away, Andrew. |
| 0:59.8 | On the 10th of May, 1940, Winston Churchill became Prime Minister at about 6 o'clock in the evening, |
| 1:05.9 | but on the morning of that day, at dawn, Adolf Hitler invaded in the West, attacking Belgium and Luxembourg |
| 1:14.9 | and Holland shortly afterwards also to invade France. And Churchill said of that day, |
| 1:20.2 | I felt as if I were walking with destiny and that all my past life had been a preparation for |
| 1:25.7 | this hour and for this trial. |
| 1:38.9 | One of the things that gave him this tremendous sense of destiny was the very many brushes with death that he had had in his life. |
| 1:44.0 | He had nearly died of pneumonia at the age of 10. |
| 1:47.0 | He had nearly died in a drowning accident on Lake Geneva, |
| 1:52.0 | nearly died also in a house fire. |
... |
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