Nicholas Soames: Sweat and tears made Winston Churchill's name
This is an edited extract from a Speaker's Lecture delivered by the Hon Nicholas Soames MP in the Palace of Westminster.
When Clement Attlee was asked if Churchill had been a great parliamentarian, he replied: "No, he was a great parliamentary figure."
To those outside politics, this might seem a fine distinction, and somewhat ungenerous to the author of some of the greatest speeches ever delivered in the House of Commons. But Mr Attlee, as so often, had made a wise comment. Nor was it in any way to Churchill's discredit.
Unlike his father, Churchill was not a natural speaker. Lord Randolph Churchill, in his very brief prime between 1880 and 1887, was the most brilliant platform speaker and parliamentary debater of the day. Lord Randolph was that relative rarity, a natural spontaneous debater in the Commons, quick to invoke the deadly weapons of mockery and irony, and acutely sensitive to the mood of the House.
But his son Winston had not inherited these gifts. For him, every speech, however brief, had to be carefully prepared – an agonising process for everyone involved. Indeed, there was much truth in the jibe of his greatest friend, F E Smith, that "Winston has spent the best years of his life composing his impromptu speeches".
People are always surprised that this most articulate of men was so dependent on prior preparation, even for minor speeches. Bob Boothby wrote, when he was Churchill's private personal secretary in the Twenties, of the prolonged nightmare of the preparation of a Churchill speech. It was a process that exhausted advisers, officials when in office, friends commanded to assist and very long-suffering and much put upon secretaries...