Oh What A Time... - #48 Speeches (Part 1)
Episode Date: May 26, 2024Let’s point our ears in the direction of some of the greatest oratory from history, because this week we’re discussing: Speeches. Henry V’s St Crispin’s Day speech (both in fiction and non-fic...tion), Elizabeth I at Tilbury and the campaigning of John Petts. We found out this week that Tom Craine’s favourite speech was performed by THAT guy from Come Dine With Me. Can you name a better speech? On this and anything else, you can email us at: hello@ohwhatatime.com If you're impatient and want both parts in one lovely go next time plus a whole lot more(!), why not treat yourself and become an Oh What A Time: FULL TIMER? In exchange for your £4.99 per month to support the show, you'll get: - two bonus episodes every month! - ad-free listening - episodes a week ahead of everyone else - And first dibs on any live show tickets Subscriptions are available via AnotherSlice, Apple and Spotify. For all the links head to: ohwhatatime.com You can also follow us on: X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepod And Instagram at @ohwhatatimepod Aaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice? Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk). Chris, Elis and Tom x Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
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Visit continue.yorku.ca Hello and welcome to Oh What A Time, the history podcast that tries to decide if the past, i.e. pre-internet time, was too reliant on human initiative,
because I don't have very much of it, I Google simple things all the time.
And looking back, having grown up in a pre-internet age,
I can't believe I was alive for as long as I was.
I made it. We all made it.
You know what, Al?
A thing that I Google far more regularly than I should is,
and this isn't to lie,
what year is it?
So I do that a minimum of five times a year.
It'll be when I'm filling out a form,
I'll go,
oh,
it's 2020.
Is it?
Is it?
And then I have to type it in.
So about five times a year,
I'm Googling what year is it?
Jay,
one of the things that's quite hard about being a sporting host and working for a football club in the capacity of a presenter
is that you often have to name the season that you're in.
And obviously it's 23-24 right now,
but there's quite a lot of mental maths in that.
Yeah.
And it feels like you're walking a tightrope the whole time.
I think, though, football fans often think in seasons
rather than calendar years.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
What is a year in football?
Nothing.
There's a bit in Fever Pitch, the Nick Hornby book, where he says,
yeah, sure, football fans drink too much on New Year's Eve,
and we sing Auld Lang Syne and all that kind of stuff,
but really, we reset in May, and we start again in August.
Good point.
Should the whole year be shifted to that accord?
Should Christmas be in April for football fans
and you have your turkey mid-April? So go from
the Julian to the Gregorian to the Premier
League. The Premier League based
calendar.
Oh, I like that. I do want to add one quick other
thing, by the way. I'm always
I'm at most wrong by a year.
I don't want people thinking I'm like five years people thinking it's 1988 yeah do you know what exactly you know my partner is he has got zero time for sport apart
from tennis during wimbledon and she already thinks football has too much of an influence
on her life if we move the calendar to the Premier League rather than the current setup.
I think that would be justified.
What would he do if you started describing the six-week summer holiday as pre-season?
I'm Chris Scull.
And I'm Tom Crane.
And each week on this show, we'll be looking at a brand new historical subject
and today we're going to be discussing speeches, great oratory moments from history.
Oh yes, we've got three big speeches for you.
Henry V, Shakespeare and the real story of the Henry V speech, Liz I, Elizabeth I and John Pett,
although he's more of a campaigner than a speech. Yeah, more of a campaign than a speech, but a very interesting story nonetheless.
Yes.
I think my favourite speech ever is the guy who lost on Come Dine With Me.
Oh, yeah.
And talks about you have all the grace and decorum of reversing dump truck.
I think that's better than Churchill.
What a sliding doors moment, because I just made a cup of tea
And I've actually got a novelty mug with his face on
And I went for the mug next to that
Oh that would have been incredible wouldn't it
What do you have a mug with his face on
Yeah yeah yeah
Do you want me to get it for the
If you wouldn't mind yeah yeah yeah
I'm not sure how good that is on sort of an audio front
Here's my mug of the man from
Come Dine With Me and it says Dear Lord what a sad little life Oh that's it saw how good that is on sort of an audio front here's my mug of the man from come down with me
and it says dear lord what a sad little life which your wife bought you not realizing who the guy was
just more of a comment on you my favorite speech and it's on youtube and it is absolutely
electric i don't know if it's my favourite speech
but it's one that made my jaw drop when I saw it
is Geoffrey Howe's resignation
speech from 1990.
Oh.
It's fantastic.
I can actually quote a part.
It's rather like going to the
widget only to find
that before the first ball
has been bowled,
the captain has smashed the cricket bat.
So, I believe... I think for overseas listeners, you should quickly explain who Geoffrey Howe is.
Geoffrey Howe was...
Was he Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time?
Hang on.
I think he was.
I think you're right about that.
Or was that...
No.
I like the cricket analogy there.
Or as I refer to him,
Geoffrey, how's that?
Very, very nice.
I think he's a cricket term.
He should have been a tabloid headline writer.
I think that's something to do with cricket.
I think he was deputy prime minister at the time.
He was chancellor before that.
So he had been chancellor
and then he became deputy.
Yeah, then he became deputy prime minister and leader of the
house of commons right and lord president of the council so he was he was absolutely furious with
thatcher by this point it is electric when you watch it it's on youtube and if you enjoy the
theater of the house of commons it's so good do you know what should we should we just play a bit
for the listeners oh yeah should we drop a bit in bit in? Here is Geoffrey Howe's resignation speech.
And real one in the eye.
This is really one in the eye for Margaret Thatcher.
Mr Speaker, I believe that both the Chancellor and the Governor
are cricketing enthusiasts.
So I hope there's no monopoly of cricketing metaphors.
It's rather like sending your opening batsman to the crease
only for them to find, the moment the first balls are bowled,
that their bats have been broken before the game
by the team captain.
Because he'd been very loyal to Thatcher
up until that point.
This is the fascinating...
He had been walked all over by Thatcher
and then after years of being under her boot,
he finally emerged.
And really, a bit like the assassination of Julius Caesar,
he was the one who began the end of Margaret Thatcher with that speech.
It's years of being talked over and undermined at work
and thinking I've actually had enough and settling all scores.
And it's a bit like Alan Partridge.
It's a bit like Alan Partridge using the phrase needless to say,
I had the last laugh 14 times in his book.
Perfect.
It is so good.
I don't know what it says about the different minds in this group. You guys have gone for the resignation speech
from the ex-chancellor
and I've gone for a man who did badly
on Come Dine With Me as my option.
Do you know what, Tom?
I think I might not be the bright one.
I would have a sleepless night over that.
I'm also going to go with the House of Commons,
something that I actually,
I think this is the greatest piece of oratory ever
is Winston Churchill's,
we will fight them on the beaches speech in the House of Commons.
When Britain's got its back against the wall in World War II,
we're literally fighting alone.
And Churchill said, we will fight them on the beach.
When I hear that, and you can hear it on YouTube,
just imagine like the power of the wireless in your home
in the Second World world war how could it
not stir you yeah yes i'll tell you what stirs in me chris is the feeling i'm really glad i wasn't
alive at a time of conscription that's what it makes me think of yeah we will fight them in the
beaches but not tom crane he's exempt do you know what i also oh neil knicksock's speech as a leader at the Bournemouth Conference in 1985.
When he loses it, when he loses his composure.
I'll tell you what happens with impossible promises.
You start with far-fetched resolutions.
They are then pickled into a rigid dogma, a code,
and you go through the years sticking to that outdated misplaced, irrelevant to the
real needs, and you end in the grotesque
chaos of a Labour council.
A Labour council hiring taxis
to scuttle round a city, handing out
redundancy notices to its own
workers. I watched that.
I was like, I go
back to it quite often
because politics is so
different now. Can you imagine
Matt Hancock doing that?
But aren't they booing
in the hall as well? Oh, it's madness
in the hall. Yeah, it's madness in the hall and you can
hear just the... And people are walking out
and there's
close-up shots of Derek
Hatton. All of the
main players are there. It is just
anarchy. He gave out the degrees players are there. It is just anarchy.
He gave out the degrees at my university.
Did he?
O'Neill Kinnock?
Yeah, yeah.
Yes, when I graduated, but he didn't quite have that fibre.
He was a bit more chilled.
He wasn't yelling at me about my future.
Kinnock would be very high.
Or misrepresented.
Kinnock is very high on my list of people I'd love to have a beer with.
The other thing about that speech, Kinnick,
and this is something that only we could discuss on this podcast,
when he's delivering that speech, isn't he just kind of flobbing a bit?
You lose some of the power of that.
He's so animated and hyped up that flob is just flying all over the front row.
Also, he's so animated, the flob is the least of his
concerns.
I did some really sort of quite
calm, but clear parenting
with my five-year-old yesterday
about something he'd been misbehaving.
Did you look at the
kitchen or his bedroom and say
the grotesque chaos
of your bedroom, your bedroom!
Well, it's just the flubbing that made me think of this,
and I thought, I've got his respect at this point,
and then I stepped down the stairs and, unfortunately,
inadvertently broke wind, and then suddenly all skill,
all power, all dignity from that moment
vanished
and he saw me
for who I was
what is this podcast
talk about
talk about pivots
to use a modern
to use a modern phrase
handbrake turns
I've
I've not helped myself again
once again
you're talking about
you're talking about politics
I'm talking about
walking down the stairs
and breaking wind
the thing is
there's something for everyone
on this podcast. Tom,
mate, you're the weak link,
but I like you.
I think you're a good guy. I think you're
a good, honest guy. I'm not going to suck
you. Yeah, I could, and I should,
but I won't.
So there you go. Top three speeches.
Winston Churchill, Geoffrey Howe,
and the bloke from Come Die With Me. There you go. Top three species. Winston Churchill, Geoffrey Howe, and the bloke from Come Die With Me.
There you go.
Before we get into correspondence, I wanted to briefly mention one thing.
You may remember I asked our listeners to leave reviews in ancient Greek,
which then I'd read out to you, and you'd have to try and translate.
So some reviews have been left.
I forgot one thing.
I can't read Greek because it's not written in our letters.
If that makes sense.
So obviously Latin makes sense because I can read.
It's a different alphabet.
In Latin, I can read out and you go, what does this mean?
As it came in, I thought, oh, I've made a mistake here.
So we're going to have to scratch that idea from the record.
Hey, it's weird, isn't it?
Weak link makes another cock up.
Who'd have thought it?
Welcome once again to Tom Crane's Corrections Corner.
He's not eating custard, he's making mistakes.
We need a new dialect, what are we going with?
Maybe dialect's the wrong word.
We need a new language.
Any one that we can read.
What are we going?
Do we go back to Latin? What are we thinking? What's the opposite word. We need a new language. Any one that we can read. What are we going? Do we go back to Latin?
What are we thinking?
What's the option?
It's medieval English.
Oh, that's nice.
That's really good.
I'm only saying that because my podcast partner,
my partner in audio, John Robbins,
has a degree in medieval English from Oxford University.
And so I don't know how much of it he remembers,
but certainly...
That's fantastic.
I'd be honest,
I think it can be an approximation of medieval English.
You could knock together your own version of it
and let's see whether we can wade through it.
But I think medieval English is a really good one.
So if you enjoyed the show,
drop us a five-star review
and leave it in medieval English
and I will test these guys next week on that.
Before we get into correspondence,
we have asked you to send new correspondence things.
We're still collecting them.
Send them in.
We will be picking one
in a couple of weeks.
I think it's worth saying
it doesn't have to be on GarageBand.
It doesn't have to be anything snazzy.
You can just sing a little ditty into your...
Exactly.
Sing a little ditty into your voice note.
Email us that.
It really doesn't matter.
The lo-fi stuff still has a charm to it.
Okay.
Correspondence.
And it is the email we've been waiting for.
Steve Morrison has sent us an email saying,
check this out for an email header.
I'm looking at your faces waiting for the excitement.
An in for Jeremy Bentham and the one day time machine.
Now then.
A genuine intake of breath from Chris Scull there.
Chaps, loving the podcast. the recent episodes covering Jeremy Bentham and his former raving days meant I had the need
to contact the podcast I work at UCL oh no hello wow wow University College London for those
abroad advising academics where and how best to apply for research funding.
A while back, I worked with an eminent scholar on Jeremy Bentham
and helped them to win their latest grant.
So, I have you an in if you want access to Bentham.
Which feels weird.
That's a weird phrase, actually.
We have talked about it.
Have we talked about Wheeling Bentham on
As our guest of honour
When we do live shows
This is it
Yeah absolutely
The plan is
On the live show
It's
Oh what a time live
With Jeremy Bentham
It's the plan
He's wheeled out
Treat him like a
Ventriloquist to me
I suppose there's no recording
Don't put your hands up him
I don't think
There's no recordings
Of his voice
So
I don't know I'm Jeremy Bentham I his voice. So, I don't know.
I'm joking about, I mean, what voice do you do for Bentham?
But to be honest, well, in that case, nobody can tell us that we're wrong.
Yeah.
Well, you can work out where he grew up.
You can look at his social class.
I'll probably give you some kind of hint to maybe the accent he had.
You can knock together an approximation.
It says, or second prize, the leading scholars on bentham for any potential
live show oh that's interesting we could get a bentham scholar on no offense to the scholars
but given the choice between the corpse of bentham and a scholar i'm going corpse of bentham
what do you think people would prefer a scholar on bentham or me to grab one of bentham's bones
and start playing the xylophone with it. Now then, born in East London.
Oh, Chris, it is your time to shine.
Is it?
However, attended Westminster School, posh school.
So he probably had a sort of RP voice, I'd imagine, or whatever the version of that accent was in of 1700s, 1800s.
It's a shame.
The idea of a Cockney philosopher,
I don't know why I find that so funny.
We can give it a bash.
Unless there's someone really old in the audience,
nobody's going to know what he sounded like.
It's unlikely there was someone still knocking around.
And if there is someone in from that time,
get them on stage.
They can be the guests.
Oh, God, yeah.
I'm not going to turn down a 400-year-old audience member.
His wealthy family were supporters of the Tory party.
He was reportedly a child prodigy.
He was found as a toddler sitting at his father's desk
reading a multi-volume history of England,
and he began to study Latin at the age of three.
Who does that not remind me of?
Tom Crane.
That's right.
A weak link on his podcast.
He didn't drink custard when he walked down the stairs his ass was completely silent
and a calm dignity about him from top to bottom and i do mean the most silent ass in all the
philosophy jeremy bentham you wouldn't know it's coming like a ninja and then he says keep up the
good work steve so there we are we have an in with bentham my favorite sentence there as i say is you
have an in if you want access to bentham as i say is you have an in if you
want access to bentham well steve thank you so much for getting in contact with the show
we may tap you up on that we'll see i'm slightly worried about chris with the xylophone idea
i think i'm sure there's legal ramifications for uh taking a corpse to pieces to uh to use on his
musical instrument do you think the idea that i might play a xylophone with Bentham's bones might put UCL off?
I think there might be.
That might be the sticking point.
Can you even play the xylophone?
No, but I'd give it a bloody good go.
Well, if you want to get in touch with the show about Bentham's bones, xylophones or anything else,
here's how you can get in touch with the show.
All right, you horrible lot.
Here's how you can stay in touch with the show.
You can email us at hello at oh, what a time dot com.
And you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter at oh, what a time pod.
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So on today's episode, I'm going to be talking to you about Elizabeth I and her incredible speeches.
I'm going to be talking about a fundraising campaign known as the Welsh Window. And I'm going to be talking to you about Henry V, the speech in Old Bill Shakespeare, and the actual speech.
If there was an actual speech, we'll get on to that.
It's one of the most famous speeches in all of English drama, and I would say the most famous rendition, in my opinion.
Kenneth Branagh, anyone argue with that?
No.
No?
No, I think so.
I think that, yeah.
Michael Sheen evokes the spirit of it, didn't he?
In the Welsh locker room.
Oh, yeah.
But obviously.
And Reece Evans did the same
prior to the failed Euro 2024 qualifying campaign.
I mean, a lot of our actors love to really, really
raise the spirit of our players before our players then go on to perform very badly. So I think, a lot of our actors love to really, really raise the spirit of our players
before our players then go on to perform very badly.
So I think, to be honest, the FAW, the Football Association of Wales,
need to re-look at this as a strategy.
How did you do in that tournament post-Sheen?
Was it really bad? Did you get out of the group?
2022 World Cup. It was absolutely humiliating.
We drew with the USA.
Bale prevented from trying to score from his own,
from the halfway line.
They took a booking for it, fouled in the final minute.
When we were on top, we lost to Iran
and then we got battered by England.
And then we all went home having had a lovely time.
Well, the speech went well at the Battle of Agincourt.
I hope that's...
Well, I'm sure that's not going to be any consolation,
nonetheless.
This most famous speech in all of English dramas
has been repeated and echoed from its debut
in the final years of Elizabeth I's reign
right through to the Lord of the Rings films.
And it is, of course, the call to arms made
by King Henry V on the eve of the Battle of Agincourt.
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.
But did it actually happen?
Thoughts?
It feels too perfect, doesn't it, I think.
Yeah.
The language of it feels too right.
Makes you really wish there'd been camera phones back then.
Yeah.
It'd be absolutely huge on Twitter.
Well, guess what? Shakespeare was not making it up at least not entirely there were words exchanged but maybe not those specific words we know that medieval
monarchs did provide an e on the eve of a battle or the eve of a big engagement a pep talk at least
to their officers in much the same way as a modern football manager would speeches before a big engagement a pep talk at least to their officers in much the same way as a modern
football manager would speeches before a big battle would range from the full-blown rabble
rousing fergie hair dryer treatment uh which you see a lot in the cinema today to um something a
bit more calm maybe the terry venables arm around the shoulder. Carlo Ancelotti.
You all know your jobs.
You all know your jobs.
Yeah?
Get that first axe swing right of the day.
Out of interest, which of those two approaches do you think would work best for you as a soldier? This was going to be my next question.
What technique before a big battle?
Let's say it's Agincourt.
What is going to work for you? Are you looking for hairdryer? Do you want an arm around the shoulder? I'm looking for a big battle. Let's say it's Agincourt. What is going to work for you? Are you
looking for a hairdryer? Do you want an arm
around the shoulder? I'm looking for a sick note
is what I'm looking for.
Sick note.
I've got
I've got
I've got
I've got diarrhea.
Okay.
That is the one to go for.
Because no one wants to be around you,
and everyone knows there's no way you can fight with diarrhoea.
That's perfect. That's absolutely perfect.
I would go with...
Genuinely, what would I go with?
I think Arm Round the Shoulder would probably be quite nice.
But more a chat about,
don't fear death, it's going to be okay.
That's what I'd want.
Yes.
That feeling of when this inevitably goes wrong,
don't worry it'll
it'll be over it'll be calm it's nothing to worry about a reminder of how great heaven is i think
would be quite good yeah exactly that's what i want 10 minutes all right here's the speech for
the battle i'm going to do about two minutes and this priest here is going to do about an hour
oh no i don't i don't want a particularly theological version of heaven i want a version
where there's kind of, you know,
there's nice coffee shops and it's all free.
There's no stairs.
It's all slides.
That sort of stuff.
And the duvets are really clean and they smell nice.
And everyone's allowed to lie in.
And you can eat crispy shredded beef every meal you want.
And it's not bad for you.
It actually prevents heart disease.
It's a bit like that speech in Gladiator, isn't it?
Where he says, if you're walking through green fields with the sun on your back,
do not fear, for you are already dead.
I love that.
And you're in Elysium. You are in Elysium.
Yeah, okay.
Right.
Well, I don't know.
I'm a little bit torn because I think you're going to want a bit of hair dry
because you're going to be amped up.
You're literally about to fight to the death.
But equally, you've got to get your game head on.
You are about to go into a battle.
Anyway, the words that came down to us from Shakespeare
are more than likely in an embellished form.
And they were passed down generations from the time of the battle in 1415
via playwrights, historians, comedians.
And they went on generation after generation until Shakespeare picked up his oratory and he put the words in Henry V's mouth.
And so in that case, by the time that Shakespeare's writing them, like I say, in 1599, it's been passed down several generations by the time he puts those words in the mouth of Henry V.
The context at the time of Shakespeare writing Henry V
is not so much the war against France,
the noumenon of the so-called Hundred Years' War,
which began under Henry's royal ancestor, Edward III,
but the anticipated invasion of Catholic Ireland
by Elizabeth I, erstwhile favourite and one-time lover,
the Earl of Essex.
This contemporary invasion of another country fuelled Protestant patriotism
and led to numerous pro-war sermons preached from pulpits all over England.
So there's, I think it's James Graham, he's a playwright who does this very well.
He takes something in the past to tell you a story about something in the present.
Ink being a
wonderful play as an example of that talking about what how murdoch took over the sun back when he
did and what that meant in today's kind of in in a contemporary way and i guess that's what shakespeare
was doing he was using the henry v speech to talk about what was happening at the time in the
invasion of Ireland.
Shakespeare, it seems, was witness to and partly inspired by a sermon delivered by Thomas Andrews
at Elizabeth's Court on Ash Wednesday,
14th of February, 1599,
which would have been 24th of February, 1599
in today's calendar,
or probably around September in the Premier League calendar.
The clubs are starting to settle into their rhythm.
That sort of time.
The new signings have had a couple of games under their belt.
They're sort of, yeah, okay, I'm with you.
The year of our Premier League, 1599-1600.
But yeah, this sermon that delivered by Thomas Andrews at Elizabeth's court
was really famous for the rhetoric he used.
And it used repetition really well.
Shakespeare, when he was getting around to writing the speech,
he did his research and he combined the present with the past.
It seems that he read available chronicles from Henry's period.
And there was a gap of about 180
years between this the result is a speech delivered when he delivered it in 1599 1600 that spoke
to audiences at that time just as well as it speaks to audiences today and also within the
context of what the English army would have heard in October 14 15 so what did the real henry the fifth actually say well
we don't know which is annoying but he probably didn't speak directly to his men it's more likely
he was speaking to the aristocratic officers the the big cheeses of the army as opposed to the individual men but there's also the pre-microphone
age yeah now both tom and i when we started out doing stand-up obviously like all stand-up comics
you do rubbish gigs and the two of us have had this experience you turn up and there's no mic
and i think at most what would you Tom, 30 people is the limit?
I'd agree.
I once did a mic-less gig in an Indian restaurant
and someone ordered a sizzling chicken hot plate
and you couldn't hear me over the top of it.
It was so loud and it was brought to the front row.
Definitely.
So, yeah, I think 30 people in an enclosed space is probably it.
An army.
Otherwise you're screaming in a sort of undefined way.
An army is tough in the pre-Mike age.
Yeah.
So he probably went around and had some quiet words for his commanders.
However, it's not necessarily certain that he only spoke to his commanders.
There is some evidence that he may have gone on a walk
about delivering a brief encouragement to his rank and file soldiers as he moved up and down
the line of battle one chronicler says that henry went along the battle line on his little gray
horse and made very fine speeches speeches plural encouraging them all to do well and saying that
he had come to france to recover hisful inheritance and that they should remember that they had been born in England
where their fathers and mothers, wives and children were at this very moment.
His men, apparently, when they heard this, shouted victory, long live the king and so on.
I wish he'd sort of like just tapped the first guy on the shoulder, done the speech and then just said,
pass that on, would you?
And then he'd just like turned to the guy to his right
and it slowly went down the line.
Need to remember that we were in England
I was sort of families, wives, kids etc
there and
I think it's his rightful
land? Is he reclaiming it?
By the end it doesn't resemble the speech at all.
It's completely different.
It's about, you know, what should be
in a Sunday roast or something like this. It's a completely changed topic. He says pigs in blankets even when it's not different it's about you know what should be in a sunday roast it's a completely
changed topic
he says pigs in blankets
even when it's not
Christmas
the man's lost it
the closest we have
in terms of evidence
to what the speech was
that was given by Henry
comes from a second hand
chronicle written by monks
a few years after Agincourt
and it was written not in France
but in Canterbury and contains various patriotic references to England and English in addition to
appeals to God and the Virgin Mary compared to the Shakespeare's version it is not the most
uplifting it's fair to say you're about to hear of wartime oratory but it does capture something
of what was expected of kings in the early 15th century and And it's as near as anything else to Henry's own rhetoric,
at least the rhetoric imagined by the Kentish clerics.
So this is what they think he said, written a few years afterwards.
My fellow men, prepare arms.
English rights are referred to God.
Memories noted many battles given for the right of King Edward III
and Prince Edward, the Black Prince.
Many a victory occurred with only a few English troops.
I am ready to die for my right in the conflict.
St. George, George, Saint and Knight, be with us.
George!
I think that's quite stirring.
It might say more about you, Chris.
I don't know.
I wasn't particularly...
Do I thought...
No, I don't.
It's a bit selfish, isn't it?
Like, oh, I really need this.
It's for me, this. Can you
die for me? Do you know what I thought when I... This is
pathetic. When I heard that
I thought, the Black Prince.
I watched the 2012 Champions League final
in a pub called the Black Prince.
I wonder how many of the soldiers were thinking that as well.
Henry V giving his speech, you're thinking
that's right, it's a bit of a pub of it, actually.
Do you reckon he said to one of his high-ranking officials,
watch me slip in the name of a pub into this.
Just watch this.
It won't make any sense.
Nobody will notice.
Oh, go on, don't do it, don't do it.
I'm going to do it.
Every time he does that.
So the invocation of Edward III, the Black Prince,
and the English patron Saint George,
whom Edward had raised to be the national saviour
above the Anglo-Saxon king,
Edward the Confessor was deliberate.
Here Henry was drawing historic parallels
to a plucky island people fighting against the odds
for survival and what was right.
And later chroniclers writing,
not in Latin as they did in country,
but in English,
get us a bit closer to Shakespeare's Henry.
And this is what later chroniclers wrote.
They said that Henry V said,
think this day to acquit yourselves as men
and fight for the right of England
in the name of almighty God, advance banners,
St. George, give us this day your help.
So you get a sense of what he probably said.
But like I say, if you want the definitive version,
check out Mr. Kenneth Branagh, I would say.
This has briefly reminded me of something that happened with my dad
when we watched a documentary on Henry V and Agincourt
and they did a reenactment and my dad pointed at the screen and said,
well, that guy's clearly an actor.
Talking about Henry.
And I thought, well, obviously.
I think we can take that as a given.
In all of these situations, these are actors.
Otherwise, how has that not come up
that there's footage of Ashley?
That's obviously... There you go, that's the end of part
one. If you cannot wait till tomorrow
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See you, guys. Thank you.