This is the kind of book I always look for when I look through a guest house’s collection: something that’ll entertain me for a few hours, but one that I’ll be happy enough to leave behind even if I haven’t finished reading it.

Important speeches often become even more important with the wisdom of hindsight, and Alan J Whitticker,  the compiler of this book, has recognised the great themes of the Twentieth Century - Politics, Civil Rights, War, Women, Change and Peace and Reconciliation - and chosen the ten speeches that were, quite possibly, most important to each of them.

If history is written by the victors, it’s made by the people - and Speeches That Reshaped The World provides a fantastic insight into the minds of everyone from Adolf Hitler (‘The Obersalzburg Speech,’ 1939) to Helen Keller (‘Against the War,’ 1916); and from Fidel Castro (‘History will Absolve Me,’ 1953) to John F. Kennedy (‘Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You,’ 1961).

Just one thing, though: Nelson Mandela is there - as he should be - for his famous speech to the Supreme Court in Pretoria during the Rivonia Trial (‘I Am The First Accused,’ 1964). But if I’m not mistaken, he dressed in traditional Xhosa gear for that occasion, did he not? And he was a far younger man then, too.

So why did the publishers put a picture of a grey-haired Mr Mandela wearing a Western-style overcoat on the cover - which might have been appropriate if one of his democratic-era speeches had been quoted. You rather get the idea that the image was a cynical sales job, and that left a bit of a strange taste when I looked for, perhaps, his inaugural address or his Nobel Acceptance - only to find that neither were there.

Still, Alan J Whitticker’s Speeches That Reshaped The World is definitely a book I’ll be going back to again and again.
Buy it here