Churchill’s Battle of Britain speech remembered

Winston Churchill called it Britain’s “finest hour” – and it came to be seen as a turning point in World War II.

70 years on, the Battle of Britain is being commemorated. In 1940 Royal Air Force pilots defied the odds to beat off the Luftwaffe in the skies over southern England, helping to save the country from Nazi occupation.

On 20th August Churchill paid tribute to their bravery: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”

His rousing words to Parliament were read out at a ceremony in London by actor Robert Hardy, who has played Britain’s wartime prime minister in five different films.

The “few” are even fewer now: about a 100 strong. Veterans in their 90s were there to watch the flypast.

More than one in six airmen who took part in the battle was killed.

Churchill’s speech was one of several that helped boost British morale during the war’s darkest days.

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