Churchill's Radio Imposter?
Solving the mystery of the British Prime Minister's wartime recordings.
In November 2000 the Observer newspaper reported that proof had at last been found that some of Winston Churchill’s most famous wartime radio broadcasts to the British people were delivered by an impersonator (the BBC radio actor Norman Shelley).
According to the report, the discovery – a 78rpm record found among Shelley’s effects by his son, labelled ‘BBC, Churchill: Speech. Artist Norman Shelley, September 7th 1942’ – ‘ends years of controversy’ among historians regarding who really broadcast several key wartime speeches, notably those first delivered to Parliament on June 4th, 1940, (‘We shall fight on the beaches’) and July 18th, 1940, (‘This was their finest hour’).
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