Lincoln was not meant to deliver the Gettysburg Address. That honour went to a man called Edward Everett, who spoke for two and a half hours. We don't remember a word of it. The rest of it was delivered exactly as was written. It's incredibly ornate, and Lincoln's plain style reinvents rhetoric on the day. You hear Cicero in Lincoln because you get this unbroken link from the American Republic all the way back to the Roman Republic.
To celebrate some of the most influential and impactful speeches ever made, we invited Barack Obama’s director of speechwriting, Cody Keenan and Tony Blair’s former speechwriter, Philip Collins, to discuss the power of the spoken word. Our host was journalist and presenter Emily Maitlis, with actors including Jeremy Irons and Carey Mulligan joining us to reenact speeches that have defined pivotal moments in history.
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