Preparing a Presentation or Speech How Did Winston Churchill Do Them So Well

“Winston’s method of speech-writing was painstaking and took many days. In 1973, John Martin, Winston’s Private Secretary, was interviewed about his boss’s process and recalled that he took ‘tremendous care’ over this secret art form. 

A typist would be called in, then Churchill would begin to ‘very slowly dictate what he was going to say . . . once he saw his very careful selection of words and phrases . . . he would try out a number of words in a sort of whisper, so you could just hear a string of about half a dozen words . . . he would say them with his tongue and try them out’ before finally selecting what he felt sounded the best. 

The next step was to have the speech typed up into ‘draft form’. Once this was done, he would go through it with a red pencil and make changes before it was typed again into a ‘semi-draft’ form. 

This would then be sent out to the various ‘experts for vetting’ to ensure the facts and figures were correct. Finally, it would be typed into ‘psalm form’. This was his own unique format – with the lines laid out like the stanzas of a poem, each new line indented a bit more than the last – that he would then begin to practice with, over and over again, pacing around the room, grabbing his lapels, trying out the full range of intonations, from bombast to whisper.”

Excerpt from

Darkest Hour

Anthony McCarten

https://books.apple.com/us/book/darkest-hour/id1222530147

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