The President was referring in particular to 1940, but Churchill's stimulating use of his native language was constant throughout his long and distinguished life. Language has two forms, written and spoken. Churchill was a master of both. As a journalist, essayist, author, novelist, historian, biographer, editor, correspondent, communicator, conversationalist and speaker he had few equals in any one of those fields, much less all of them. He has been described as a law unto himself in his use of words, as in so many other matters.
Authors are the happy people in the world, whose work is pleasure.
No one can set himself to the writing of a page of English composition without feeling a real pleasure in the medium in which he works, the flexibility and the profoundness of his noble mother tongue. I have sometimes fortified myself amid the vexations, vicissitudes and uncertainties of political life by the reflection that I might find a secure line of retreat on the pleasant, peaceful and fertile country of the pen, where one need never be idle or dull. Those spoken words, as written words, read just as well as they must have sounded to that gathering over ninety years ago. Churchill spoke and wrote with a rhythm which made it almost poetical. He arranged his notes for his speeches in a format closely resembling blank verse.