Winston Churchill
Great Lives
BBC
4.2 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 14 September 2010
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Winston Churchill's is the Great Life chosen by Lord Digby Jones, former Director General of the CBI.
Expert contribution comes from Professor David Reynolds. Both men have vivid memories of the day in 1965 when, as children, they heard that Churchill had died.
Surprisingly this is the first time that Churchill has been nominated in this long-running series.
Considered by many a busted flush in the 1930s, Churchill is now remembered as our greatest wartime leader - his speech before the Battle of Britain still sends a shiver down the spine. But his great qualities and personal flaws remained inextricably linked.
David Reynolds has uncovered a stark revelation about Churchill's real state of mind at the time he made that speech, while Digby Jones argues that the ability to instil confidence in people even when there is little rational hope of victory is one of the signs of a great leader.
He believes that no one made his mark on the last century in the way that Churchill did.
David does not subscribe to the Great Man theory of history. He is the Professor of International History at Cambridge University. Known to Radio 4 listeners as the writer and presenter of "America, Empire of Liberty", he has also written extensively on Churchill, including the book "In Command of History" about Churchill's memoirs of the Second World War.
Presenter: Matthew Parris
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in September 2010.
Transcript
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| 0:46.2 | Radio 4. |
| 0:47.6 | Hello and welcome to Great Lives. My guest today is Lord Digby Jones and he has a very particular reason for choosing |
| 0:55.6 | his great life. |
| 0:56.6 | Digby, tell us what you remember as a little boy in 1965. |
| 1:02.2 | I have a memory of a very cold January day and coming in from school and there were |
| 1:08.5 | mom and dad in tears and Winston Churchill died. He then lay in state in Westminster Hall and they went |
| 1:17.5 | down to London and joined the queue in the freezing cold and walk past Churchill's coffin and pay their due respects to |
| 1:27.0 | the man that they acknowledged had saved their country. And then came the day of |
| 1:32.3 | Winston Churchill's funeral. And everybody in the street |
| 1:35.6 | gathered around the one TV which was in our shop and we watched this fabulous Englishman, |
| 1:42.0 | the greatest Englishman in my view that ever lived and I can remember |
| 1:44.8 | all the cranes coming down in pay respect like luring of huge battle ensigns as the funeral |
| 1:52.1 | barge went past. |
| 1:54.0 | Also with us, Professor David Reynolds has memories of that time as well. |
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