New website collects top UK political speeches

A new website called British Political Speech is an online archive of speeches and a place where rhetoric freaks can discuss, analyze and savor succulent speeches.

Dr. Alan Finlayson from Swansea University has archived British speeches, so far, back to 1895, reports our UK correspondent Brian Jenner. “The long-term goal of the project and the site is to raise interest in, and understanding of political speech and rhetoric, especially among academics, politicians and political commentators; to promote discussion about what makes a good or a bad speech and what might make British political rhetoric better.”

Finlayson is hoping the site is more than a research tool. He hopes people will comment on the speeches in the archive, and add their favorite speeches to it “so that the archive can become a truly comprehensive record of the many modes of British Political Speech,” according to Jenner.