Boris Johnson explains how to speak like Winston Churchill

Thank you for this link! I was just watching a documentary from several years ago by David Starkey about Churchill, and how his study of his ancestor, the 1st Duke of Marlborough, explicitly prepared him for his role as the wartime prime minister. (It’s available on Acorn.) It was truly fascinating (and makes me want to read everything Churchill ever wrote), but it struck me as I was listening to an excerpt about Victory that, translated into modern American idiom, it might be something like, “we’ll keep winning so much you’ll say, ‘No! We can’t take it anymore! It’s too much winning!'”

Not that any modern orator can approach Churchill’s mastery, but it’s not too hard to see some parallels.

Edited to add: I note also that Johnson was educated at Eton and Oxford on scholarship, that he studied Classics, and spent significant time writing as a journalist, being for some time a foreign correspondent (though not, to his chagrin, as a war correspondent). Churchill went to Harrow and Sandringham, but while employed as a foreign and war correspondent, embarked on a self-directed course of reading classics and greats.