From KIERAN McGOVERN
Barry Fox, in his intriguing piece ‘We shall trick them in the speeches’
(Technology, 18 May) showing that the voice on recordings of some famous
Winston Churchill speeches was that of Norman Shelley, strikes a familiar
chord on a further piece of Churchilliana.
Churchill’s masterpiece of 4 June 1940 – ‘we shall fight on the beaches,
in the fields . . . and in the hills’ – was, in fact, lifted from a famous
speech delivered by the Irish patriot Robert Emmet on 19 September 1803
– to ‘fight them on the beaches . . . in the country . . . and dispute every
inch of ground . . . until the last entrenchment of liberty should be the
grave’.
Churchill is known to have admired the Emmet speech, which was his last.
It was delivered from the dock.
Emmet was speaking of the French, had they arrived uninvited.
Advertisement
Kieran McGovern Dublin
