Especially the part where he says in his famous speech 'we shall defend our island whatever the cost may be'. Why is there no gusto or any sort of emotion except 'I'm tired I want to go home'.

​

Okay so the first thing that needs to be mentioned is that you haven't actually heard Churchill's original 4th June 1940 speech. No one has who wasn't in the House of Commons on the day it was delivered. What you have heard is probably a 1949 recording that Churchill made in his Kent home, Chartwell. The House of Commons didn't record its proceedings until well after the war.

The effect the original speech had on many of its listeners was electric. MP Henry 'Chips' Channon recorded in his diary^(1) that:

​

He [Churchill] was eloquent, and oratorical, and used magnificent English; several Labour members cried.

Another politician who was present, Harold Nicholson, also recorded (in a letter to his wife) that the 'House [of Commons] was deeply moved'.^(2)

Not everyone was as impressed though. According to former Prime Minister Lloyd George - who described the speech as 'magnificent' - Churchill's reception from the Conservative benches was "very half hearted... he got far less applause that was usually accorded to Chamberlain".^(3) Churchill it seems did not carry the full confidence of his own party for obvious reasons quite yet. The French Ambassador also did not like the implication that France would soon drop out of the war, although his objections did not carry much weight as France was circling the drain. The statement that the Empire overseas would continue the war even if Britain itself was conquered pleased imperialists like Leopold Amery who wrote that Churchill's "note of defiance... was all that I could have wished".^(4)

The speech was also a success in the United States. Roosevelt apparently liked it "very much" and even the isolationist Chicago Daily Tribune said that 'he [Churchill] is worth a quarter of a million or more soldiers to Great Britain'. The New York correspondent of the Times (London, not New York) reported that people were 'stopping each other in the street to talk about it'. ^(5)

Among the British public the speech did not make a major impact because not much attention was drawn to it. Only two newspapers - the Daily Mirror and the Daily Worker - gave the speech "headline value". Although it stiffened the morale on workers in Birmingham (who showed a greater eagerness to speed up war production") the overall mood of the public seems to have apprehension that France would soon throw in the towel. Toye sums it up thus^(6):

​

It was not that the British people failed to spot that it was a good speech. It is just that, on the whole, it failed to cheer them up. This was only natural, given that it warned them that their country was under threat of invasion. It was equally only natural that the Americans, at a distance, should draw more optimistic lessons

Robert McKay, in his book Half the Battle: Civilian Morale in Britain During the Second World War writes the following on Churchill's speeches^(7):

When it comes to assessing the effect of attempts to reassure the public and to stimulate its patriotic feelings and behaviour, Churchill's speeches stand out as playing a unique role. Was he telling the people what they wanted to hear? A fight to the death? No surrender, come what may? It would seem so. Many contemporary accounts - not just the fancy of retrospect - testify to the very real sense in which he both inspired and personified the people. Molly Weird told of how her mother responded to him: "She loved, above all things, listening to Churchill..."Here he comes. The British bulldog. By God, he puts new life into you". 'What they like most', wrote Mollie Panter-Downes, ' is his great gift for making them forget the discomfort, danger and loss and remember only that they are living history'. His 'blood, sweat and tears' speech, she though, 'struck the right note with the public because it was the kind of tough talk they wanted to hear after months of woolly optimism'. Churchill's own view on this was characteristically modest: 'I was very fortunate: I did nothing more than give expression to the opinion of the people of this country, and I was fortunate in being able to put their sentiments into words'. The implication is that the speeches were not primarily attempts to persuade at all. Frances Partridge was not sure about this: 'I remember, how loathsome his early speeches seemed to me and wonder if it is I who have changed, or Winston? Have we all given in and become war minded, where once we stuck our toes in?' George Beardmore, while coolly objective about the oratorical skill being deployed, was none the less happy to admit that this was a voice both for and of the people: 'A marvelous speech and a long one by Churchill last Sunday in his appeal to the Americans...His closing passage "Give us the tools and we will finish the job" [emphasis in the original], was so intense that it kept a roomful of us silent for three minutes after he'd gone... His genius is that while he puts into magnificent words what we are thinking, he manages at the same time to inspire'. Isaiah Berlin, too, noted Churchill's ability to 'impose his imagination and his will upon his fellow countrymen...[He] lifted them to an abnormal height in moment of crisis', turning them 'out of their normal selves, and, by dramatising their lives and making them seem to themselves and to each other clad in the fabulous garments appropriate to a great historic moment, transformed the cowards into brave men and so fulfilled the purpose of shining armour'.

​

Your next question:

​

Did churchill have a speech impediment or was he as he was accused drunk?

​

Yes, Churchill had a lisp and had to work hard to deliver speeches. Oratory did not come naturally to him. In one of his early parliamentary speeches (in April 1904) Churchill forgot what he was going to say (he was speaking from memory) and had to sit down.^(8) Here is how Hansard recorded it.

Churchill did drink a lot but a lifetime of doing so meant that by 1940 he had a strong constitution and could cope with it. There were certainly occasions during the war when he was inebriated though but not when delivering any of his most famous speeches. I answered a question on his drinking recently here.

​

Sources

^(1)Quoted in Roberts, Churchill: Walking with Destiny, p.552

^(2)Ibid., p.552

^(3)Quoted in Toye, The Roar of the Lion, p.53

^(4) Ibid., p.53

^(5)Ibid., p.54

^(6)Ibid.

^(7)MacKay, Half the Battle, pp.177-8

^(8)Roberts,Churchill: Walking with Destiny, p.91

Thank you for your time and the amazing answer! I honestly never even considered the recording was made post war. I believed it was for a radio broadcast or something along those lunes, thus explaining the studio like quality and lack of background noise. I've just listened to Churchill's first address to the nation and it is definitely different! Again thank you for clarifying. I feel smarter!