Talking History: 150 years of Speakers and Speeches

At the heart of this book are sixteen historic speeches which have helped shape the world included in chronological order.

The speeches are drawn from across the world North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Themes include racial equality, the rights of women and climate change.  They are by political leaders, campaigners, activists and figureheads.

A few of the speeches are very well-known, including Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address during the Civil War, on the principle that all men are created equal and Churchill’s ‘Their finest Hour’ rallying cry before the Battle of Britain. But there are also a number of lesser-known speeches made at pivotal historical moments such as Jawarharal Nehru’s ‘A Tryst with Destiny’ on the eve of the partition of India and Helen Keller’s speech acknowledging the legacy of Louis Braille. Several contemporary speakers feature including Malala Yousafzai at the United Nations on the importance of education and Barack Obama on the significance of the Selma marches in the fight for equality. He quotes Martin Luther King whose hugely significant ‘I have a Dream’ speech is a surprising omission.

Other speeches are by activists fighting for women’s rights including Emmeline Pankhurst and Funmilayo Ransome – Kuti from Nigeria, likely to be less well known in the UK. Climate change activist Greta Thunberg features alongside Severn Cullis-Suzukin1992, both of their speeches calls to action. There is contemporary resonance also in Angela Merkel’s speech on the need for global response to health crises in the wake of the Covid pandemic.

An interesting feature is the analysis of each speech in terms of the speakers’ strategies such as the use of repetition, what they did and did not include and how they prepared.

Each speechmaker is allotted two double page spreads. Extracts, sometimes surprisingly short, from each speech are included. A historical context, often quite extensive is also given for example Yuri Gagarin’s patriotic speech after the first human space flight after during the Cold War. Links are included to encourage readers to explore more on each theme.

There is a glossary with key terms at the back of the book. A graphic format has been used with varied layout. The amount of information included in many sections, together with design choices such as background and text colour and font size make some sections quite hard to read.  One or two of the speeches are hard to locate on the very busy pages.

This is a great idea for a book and very interesting to dip into. It would be even more successful if the speech extracts were sometimes slightly longer and always centre stage. In addition, the historical contextualisation could be slightly abridged at times and the design less dominant.