Shaun Usher - Speeches of Note: An Eclectic Collection of Orations Deserving of a Wider Audience

I am not very good at making books and it is no exaggeration to say that you are only holding Speeches of Note in your hands thanks to the patience, assistance and hard work of a number of people who are not me, all of whom deserve thanks and rapturous applause. First and foremost, Karina, who against all odds has not only remained my wife during the stressful production of four Of Note books, but who also worked on this particular title as permissions editor, a role of unimaginable complexity and horror. I simply could not have finished this book without her, for those reasons and more.

Thanks, also, to the following lovely people: my excellent publisher at Hutchinson, Sarah Rigby, who is a saint deserving of a medal of some sort, and everyone else at Penguin Random House, including Najma Finlay, Celeste Ward-Best, Jocasta Hamilton, Phil Brown, Lauren Wakefield and Isabelle Everington; the designers and typesetters of these beautiful pages, Will Webb and Lindsay Nash; my agent, Caroline Michel, and her entire team at Peters Fraser & Dunlop; Dan Kieran, John Mitchinson and everyone else at the magnificent Unbound; Jamie Byng for his energy and support; the superhuman archivists of this world; everyone who has told me of their favourite speech during the past few years of research; and my friends and family. Special mention must go to the supremely talented Matthew Richardson, whose illustrations bring a number of these speeches to life in ways I couldnt have imagined, and to Helen Osborne at Heart Agency for her help and patience.

And last but not least, enormous thanks to all of the speechwriters featured in this book and to their estates, and to everyone who initially pledged for this book when it was first announced on Unbound.co.uk. Without you, Speeches of Note would simply not exist.

Shaun Usher

SHAUN USHER is the writer and curator of the popular blogs lettersofnote.com and listsofnote.com. As a result, he spends much of his life hunting down letters and making lists of things hed like to share. His first book, Letters of Note, became an international bestseller. Shaun lives in Manchester, England, with his wife, Karina, and their two sons.

WHO GEORGE MANLEY
WHERE WICKLOW, IRELAND
WHEN AUGUST 14, 1738

On August 14, 1738, in County Wicklow, Ireland, a man named George Manley was hanged for murder. Very little is known about his life, or indeed the crime for which he paid the ultimate price. What we do know, however, is that moments before his death at Wicklows gallows, Manley gave a speech to all who had assembled to witness the spectacle.

My Friends,

You assemble to see what? A man take a leap into the abyss of death. Look and you shall see me go with as much courage as Curtius, when he leapt into the gulf to save his country from destruction. What then will you see of me? You say that no man without virtue can be courageous. You see, I am courageous. Youll say I have killed a man. Marlborough killed his thousands and Alexander his millions. Marlborough and Alexander, I must be hanged.

Now, my friends, I have drawn a parallel between two of the greatest men that ever lived and myself. But these were men of former days. Now Ill speak a word of some of the present days. How many men were lost in Italy and upon the Rhine, during the last war, for settling a king in Poland? Both sides could not be in the right. They are Great Men, but I killed a solitary man, Im a little fellow. The King of Spain takes our ships, plunders our merchants, kills and tortures our men but what of all that? What he does is good: hes a Great Man, he is clothed in purple, his instruments of murder are bright and shining; mine was but a rusty gun, and so much for comparison.

Now, I would fain know what authority there is in Scripture for a rich man to murder, to plunder, to torture and ravage whole countries; and what law it is that condemns a poor man to death for killing a solitary man or for stealing a solitary sheep to feed his family. But bring the matter closer to our own country: what is the difference between running in a poor mans debt, and by the power of gold or any other privilege preventing him from obtaining his right, and clapping a pistol to a mans breast and taking from him his purse? Yet the one shall thereby obtain a coach, and honours and titles etc. The other: what? A cart and a rope.

From what I have said, my brethren, you may, perhaps, imagine I am hardened. But believe me, I am fully convinced of my follies and acknowledge the just judgment of God has overtaken me. I have no hopes, but from the merits of my Redeemer, who I hope will have mercy on me, as he knows that murder was far from my heart and what I did was through rage and passion, being provoked thereto by the deceased.

Take warning, my dear comrades: Think! Oh think! What I would now give, that I had lived another life.

Alexander III of Macedon otherwise known as Alexander the Great created one of the largest empires of the ancient world. General John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, led the allied forces during the War of the Spanish Succession at the beginning of the eighteenth century.

A woman who brewed and sold ale.

The War of the Polish Succession (173335) was a major European conflict sparked by a Polish civil war over the succession to Augustus II.

WHO JUSTIN TRUDEAU
WHERE MONTREAL
WHEN OCTOBER 3, 2000

On September 28, 2000, Canadas fifteenth prime minister, Pierre Trudeau, died of prostate cancer. Trudeau was a charismatic and popular man, who had served a total of fifteen years in office. During the state funeral, days later, thousands lined the streets of Montreal; inside the Notre-Dame Basilica itself could be found such people as Fidel Castro, Leonard Cohen and Jimmy Carter. But the ceremony was also notable for a moving speech ably delivered by Trudeaus eldest son, Justin, then a 28-year-old schoolteacher. Indeed, his eulogy was so well delivered that some commentators wondered aloud whether he could one day follow in the footsteps of his late father. Fifteen years later, Justin Trudeau would become the twenty-third prime minister of Canada.

Friends, Romans, countrymen.

I was about six years old when I went on my first official trip. I was going with my father and my grandpa Sinclair up to the North Pole.

It was a very glamorous destination. But the best thing about it was that I was going to be spending lots of time with my dad because in Ottawa he just worked so hard.

One day, we were in Alert, Canadas northernmost point, a scientific military installation that seemed to consist entirely of low, shed-like buildings and warehouses.

Lets be honest. I was six. There were no brothers around to play with and I was getting a little bored because Dad still somehow had a lot of work to do.

I remember a frozen, windswept Arctic afternoon when I was bundled up into a Jeep and hustled out on a special top-secret mission. I figured I was finally going to be let in on the reason of this high-security Arctic base.

I was exactly right.

We drove slowly through and past the buildings, all of them very grey and windy. We rounded a corner and came upon a red one. We stopped. I got out of the Jeep and started to crunch across towards the front door. I was told, no, to the window.

So I clambered over the snowbank, was boosted up to the window, rubbed my sleeve against the frosty glass to see inside and as my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I saw a figure, hunched over one of many worktables that seemed very cluttered. He was wearing a red suit with that furry white trim.