The Penguin Book of Modern Speeches

Front Cover
Brian MacArthur
Penguin Books, 2012 - History - 582 pages

Whether it was Churchill rousing the British to take up arms or the dream of Martin Luther King, Fidel Castro inspiring the Cuban revolution or Barack Obama on Selma and the meaning of America, speeches have profoundly influenced the way we see ourselves and society.

Gathered here are some of the most extraordinary and memorable speeches of the last century. Some are well known, others less so, but all helped form the world we now inhabit.

'Time and again, MacArthur satisfies the reader's expectations. They are all here: Lloyd George's fit country for heroes, Woodrow Wilson's world made safe for democracy, Enoch Powell's River Tiber foaming with much blood' The Times Literary Supplement

'It would be hard to do better than MacArthur's selection, which is a tribute to the breadth of his knowledge' The Times

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About the author (2012)

Brian MacArthur was born in Essex, England on February 5, 1940. He was working for the Sunday Times during the Hitler Diaries scandal of 1983. He left the Sunday Times shortly after the scandal to became editor of the Western Morning News. After two years there, he became the founding editor of Today. He left Today in 1987 to rejoin the Sunday Times. From 2006 to 2010, he was the books editor of the Daily Telegraph. He wrote several books including Deadline Sunday, Surviving the Sword, For King and Country, and Eddy Shah: Today and the Newspaper Revolution. He edited The Penguin Book of Modern Speeches. He died of leukemia on March 24, 2019 at the age of 79.