Lincoln was very active in his speech writing. He was precise with his edits and the words that he chose. By the time we went up to give a speech, it's exactly what he wanted to say. So more often than not, he'd stick to it because he'd already worked through. We're going to take ourselves into the first speech now. This is the Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln. Something that I had always thought was this wonderful free-flowing thing,. But you've explained there are sort of different iterations of this before he actually landed on the Gettysburg version.
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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