As Lt. Winston S. Churchill approached his twenty-third birthday in 1897, he preoccupied his mind with his future. In the preceding summer, he had himself attached to the Malakand Field Force, which set out to police the borders of India’s Northwest Frontier—today the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan. As a soldier of the Queen stationed in India, Churchill was seeking action, military action in which he would not only participate but would also write about afterwards in order to make a name for himself. His goal: election to Parliament.
While the writing of The Story of the Malakand Field Force soon overtook everything else, Churchill paused to draft the following essay as he contemplated his political future. He never finished the draft and left handwritten notes alongside the typed text about what he planned to expand and improve. “I am dissatisfied with it and do not think as much of it as I did,” he wrote his mother. Fortunately, he retained the materials, which eventually passed into the Churchill Archives unpublished until the International Churchill Society posted the text on its website a full century after the composition.
No study of Churchill as orator can neglect his youthful but prescient narrative about what makes a great speaker.
Of all the talents bestowed upon men, none is so precious as the gift of oratory. He who enjoys it wields a power more durable than that of a great king. He is an independent force in the world. Abandoned by his party, betrayed by
