Winston Churchill

2003

Central DA566.9 C5 B5398. (Every effort has been made to contact copyright owners of the images displayed in this online exhibition. If any issues arise from their display, please contact Special Collections, University of Otago, special.collections@otago.ac.nz)

New York: New York University Press

In a House of Commons speech, given in 1947 after he was voted out of office, Winston Churchill (1874-1965) said that ‘Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time’. Despite this criticism some believe Churchill to be one of the driving forces behind the ‘modern democratic world order’. The democratic realities of ancient Greece were very different from those of today but the democratic West does share some basic tenets with the citizens of Athens: freedom of speech, equality in the eyes of the law and the ability to exercise the right to vote. According to S. Goldhill ‘The democratic ideal is the banner under which the West lives and fights’.