what we are currently reading:
Craig, our general manager marketing & corporate services is currently reading:
Speeches that changed the world by Simon Sebag Montefiore
As the introduction to this book reads ‘the stories and transcripts of the moments that made history’. The book includes historical moments in time with speeches from the likes of George Washington, Queen Elizabeth I, Winston Churchill, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa and Nelson Mandela – to name a few
A favourite ‘I have the heart and stomach of a king’ by Queen Elizabeth I, not only due to my interest in the history of the Royal Houses of Europe and Egypt, but due to the intesity around her words in a speech she gave to her troops at Tilbury in 1588 for what could very well have been her last before the Spanish invasion. Everything looked dire for England’s rather pathetic troops paraded on the hill as Spanish ships were visable on the horizon, listening to the rallying words of their Queen “Let tyrants fear, I have always so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good-will of my subjects; and therefore I am come amongst you, as you see, at this time, not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live and die amongst you all; to lay down for my God, and for my kingdom, and my people, my honour and my bolld, even in the dust.” What mettle she showed in a time when doubt would have been amongst her troops “I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman”…no humbler words have been spoken by a reigning monarch in my opinion. |