Our team of historians, broadcasters and authors champion the most powerful orations from the past
“Athens crowns her sons, living and dead”
Pericles’ funeral oration in 431 BC becomes a manifesto for democracy
At the height of the Peloponnesian War, the Athenian statesman Pericles delivered his funeral oration for the city’s war dead, as preserved by Thucydides in his History of the Peloponnesian War. At first glance, the speech appears to follow convention, honouring those who died in battle. Instead of dwelling on individual heroism, though, Pericles turned his audience’s attention to the values that made such sacrifice meaningful. Athens, he argued, was not great because of its power alone but because of its democracy, its openness and its commitment to equality before the law.
His speech remains a masterclass in rhetoric. By balancing praise with persuasion, Pericles uses the emotional weight of the moment to reinforce unity and resolve. He transforms grief into purpose and presents the fallen as proof of a political ideal worth defending. In this way, he transforms the sacrifice of the people into an Athenian ideal: “For where the rewards of virtue are greatest, there the noblest citizens are enlisted in the service of the state.”
Today, we can see that its power also lies in its universality. As in later speeches, such as the Gettysburg Address, it asks a timeless question: what makes a society worth dying for?
Jess Venner, ancient historian and author of The Lost Voices of Pompeii (Mudlark, 2026)
“We shall fight on the beaches”
In 1940, with Britain at its lowest ebb, Churchill delivers his battle cry
Any list of the top speeches in history must contain at least one by Winston Churchill. Across a parliamentary career spanning more than 60 years, Churchill delivered many important speeches, but it was his wartime oratory that made him internationally famous. One speech – his first as prime minister, in which he claimed he had nothing to offer the British public but “blood, toil, tears and sweat” – is so famous that it is quoted on the current UK £5 note.
In my opinion, however, his greatest speech was delivered to parliament on 4 June 1940 after the dramatic evacuation of Allied troops from Dunkirk, trapped by advancing German forces. It tells the story of what was, in Churchill’s own words, “a colossal military disaster” – but then re-frames it as a message of hope. The defeat in northern France could have been the end of the British Army, yet more than 338,000 soldiers had been rescued from the beaches and brought home. It was sheer bravery that had saved them – the same spirit that would make Britain a beacon of hope for the inhabitants of occupied Europe in the coming years.
The speech ends with probably the most famous expression of determination in oratorical history: “We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”
It was exactly what his country needed to hear. MP Harold Nicolson called it “the finest speech I have ever heard”. Several in the House of Commons were driven to tears by their PM’s words – as was Churchill himself.
Keith Lowe, author of The Fear and the Freedom: How the Second World War Changed Us (Viking, 2017)
- Read more | Before the Nuremberg Trials, this was Winston Churchill’s shocking plan for Nazi war criminals
“What, to the slave, is the Fourth of July?”
In 1852, abolitionist Frederick Douglass issues his searing challenge to a nation that celebrates liberty while sustaining slavery
In 1850, the United States Congress passed an act requiring authorities and citizens in free states to aid in the surveillance, capture and return of fugitive slaves. It conscripted law enforcement and everyday people alike into the work of catching enslaved people, and even incentivised the kidnapping of free black people.
It was with the Fugitive Slave Act in mind that abolitionist Frederick Douglass took to the podium at an Independence Day celebration in 1852. “What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?” he asked. “I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.”
To the enslaved, he told his audience, “your denunciations of tyrants [are] brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery”. The trumpeted piety of an enslaving nation struck him as “bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy – a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages”. America could save itself, redeem itself, only through abolition.
Douglass would be echoed over the decades by every black reformer who urged the US to live up to its democratic promise. People still gather to read his speech each Fourth of July because they, like he, rail at but “do not despair of” the US. Douglass’s speech drives home that a better world is possible – but, to build it, we have to be relentlessly honest about the failings of our current one.
Adriane Lentz-Smith, associate professor of history at Duke University
“I have the heart and stomach of a king of England”
Threatened by the Spanish Armada in 1588, Elizabeth I speaks as a warrior
In late May 1588, an ‘invincible’ armada of 130 ships carrying more than 18,000 Spanish soldiers set sail from Lisbon. It was the greatest threat that Elizabeth I had encountered in her reign – and that England had faced since the Norman invasion of 1066.
When messengers brought news that the Spanish fleet had been spied in the channel, Elizabeth was spurred into action. On 8 August she travelled to Tilbury in Essex, where her land forces had gathered to repel the expected invasion. Conscious of the power of image, she wore a military-inspired outfit with a plumed helmet and steel breastplate over a white velvet gown.
Keenly aware that warfare was not seen as women’s work, the queen reputedly assured her assembled troops that, though she had “the body of a weak and feeble woman”, she had “the heart and stomach of a king”, and vowed to fight alongside them. It was a masterclass in propaganda.
In fact, by that time the Spanish had already been all but vanquished. Though the English weather played the greatest role, Elizabeth was quick to make the most of the victory. “He [God] blew and they were scattered,” declared the medal she had struck soon afterwards. The famous Armada portrait shows the queen triumphant, her hand resting on a globe, while in the background her navy prepares to attack the Spanish fleet. Through her speech and the propaganda that followed, Elizabeth had placed herself at the heart of England’s victory.
Tracy Borman, author, historian and broadcaster
“I will gladly drink ale with the gods”
The last words of ninth-century Viking hero Ragnar Loðbrók are legendary
When it comes to the Viking Age, great speeches tend to shade into the realms of fiction and fantasy. There are some cracking examples – though whether anyone actually made them at the time is another matter.
One of the best is Krákumál, or ‘Speeches of the Crow’, a poem placed into the mouth of the quasi-legendary hero Ragnar Loðbrók (‘hairy breeches’) as he lay dying in a pit of venomous snakes. It survives in two main manuscripts, one from around 1400 and one from 1600–50. Given that Ragnar is associated with the era of the Great Heathen Army and, therefore, can be placed in the ninth century, that’s one hell of a time jump. If we’re going to be really picky, we might ask whether anyone would really have been in the right frame of mind to compose a 29-stanza poem as they were being bitten to death by snakes? And who was there to remember and write it down?
But let’s not let historical pedantry get in the way of a fabulous speech. It’s gorily atmospheric, full of typically Viking battle imagery in the form of kennings, the Old Norse poetic equivalent of cryptic crossword clues. Spears become “flying dragons of wounds”, swords are “corpse-candles” and shields are “storm-clouds of swords”.
As Ragnar reaches the end of his poem, he looks towards a glorious afterlife in Valhalla and speaks some of the most famous lines of Old Norse literature: “I will gladly drink ale with the gods in the high seat. Hopes of life are past: laughing shall I die.”
Eleanor Barraclough, historian and author of Embers of the Hands (Profile, 2024)
“You have no right to this soul”
In the court of heaven, the mother of God takes on Satan – and wins
My favourite speech in history is an imaginary one. The Middle Ages in Christian Europe were profoundly patriarchal, but everyone loved the Virgin Mary. Indeed, the ubiquity of her presence in paintings, frescoes and statues almost make this appear to be a matriarchal society – even though we know that was far from the case.
Mary was, of course, revered because she carried the baby Jesus – she was a model of submissive obedience. That, though, was often not the quality foregrounded in the later Middle Ages. Instead, Mary was widely presented as extremely feisty, intelligent, witty – and certainly not to be messed with.
There are many examples of Mary speaking up loudly, angrily and powerfully in this period – in religious songs, in poetry and in drama. And one popular 14th-century poem, L’Advocacie Nostre Dame, presents the Virgin Mary in the court of heaven pleading the cause of humanity. Opposite her stands Satan, arguing that humans should all, by rights, be in hell.
It’s an extraordinary piece of literature, imagining a theological dispute in a court setting. All of the details of a contemporary legal court are there. Satan argues that he holds a contract by which humankind should pay the price for its sinfulness. Mary explains why this contract doesn’t hold, and does so in extremely learned terms. In this courtroom, God is the judge – and Mary is at pains to remind him that he’s her son.
In a final flourish, she rips open her dress and bares her breasts in front of the court. God is confronted by his mother angrily telling him to look at the breasts at which he suckled – and to jolly well do what he’s told.
Hannah Skoda, associate professor of medieval history at the University of Oxford
“The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must”
A chilling Athenian defence of power made in 416 BC echoes across centuries
A speech expressing ideas that have endured through history is the Melian dialogue, reported by the fifth-century-BC Greek historian Thucydides as direct speech between Athenian forces and representatives of the small Aegean island of Melos.
This episode came at the height of Athens’ empire, when that city-state’s power and might – as well as its tyrannical control of its realm and the way in which it tried to throw its weight around in Greece more widely – was being contested by a grouping of Greek states led by the Spartans. The Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC) split Greece in two. Though Melos was neutral in this conflict, the Athenians turned up with their formidable navy in 416 BC, demanding that the island become part of their empire and pay them tribute.
In the dialogue, the Melians plead that they don’t want to fight Athens – they just want to remain neutral, and ask why they can’t be left alone. The Athenians argue that, as the strongest power, they can do what they want – and the weaker Melians must simply accept it: “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”
This is perhaps the earliest articulation of the doctrine of political realism – one that has, sadly, echoed down the generations and across all parts of the world. It is no fine speech in terms of inspiring great thoughts and actions. Rather, it is a terrifying declaration that epitomises (and has too often been used to justify) acts of conquest and control.
Michael Scott, professor in classics and ancient history at the University of Warwick
“For having suffered this horrid trade...we are all guilty”
William Wilberforce exhorts the 1789 parliament to ban slavery
On 12 May 1789, a small man in his late twenties rose to address the House of Commons. He was William Wilberforce, an MP for Yorkshire – and over the next three and a half hours he delivered one of the greatest speeches parliament has ever heard.
Wilberforce’s aim was to secure the abolition of the slave trade, and his speech combined moral passion with forensic detail. For months he had been analysing evidence and building a case. He described the Middle Passage – by which millions of enslaved Africans were transported across the Atlantic – in vivid and shocking detail, arguing that the self-interest of slave traders had blinded them to its obvious horrors. But they weren’t the only ones to blame. Every man in parliament, Wilberforce argued – including himself – was guilty of failing to extinguish the wicked trade.
When Wilberforce finally took his seat, Edmund Burke declared that all of Europe was indebted to him for raising the issue in such a “masterly, impressive and eloquent” style. The prime minister, William Pitt (the Younger) voiced his approval for total abolition.
Yet it wasn’t enough. Wilberforce’s opponents in the house, representing the interests of plantation owners, managed to stall the debate. Parliament then adjourned for the summer, and the motion failed. For all its brilliance, Wilberforce’s speech did not strike a decisive blow – the slave trade wasn’t banned for another 18 years – but his voice had sounded the charge.
Bob Nicholson, writer, broadcaster and historian at Edge Hill University
This article was first published in the September 2026 issue of HistoryExtra Magazine