Some speeches includes…
Some extracts:
from the Preface of the book written by the compiling author… speeches…
Speeches are meant to be spoken - and heard. For this reason, a speech is fundamentally different from other forms of written text, for it is not simply dependant on the words alone…
on speech writing…
The style of the speeches too changed. Nehru and his contemporaries and almost certainly the generation preceding him has all written their own speeches. This cannot be said for the politicians of the post-Nehru era. Most, if not all, the major political figured from Indira Gandhi onwards had their own team whose members works on the speeches and wrote them. None of the great orators, during the 2nd WW and the period preceding it, employed speechwriters. Churchill wrote his own speeches and rehearsed them again and again.
on Sharda Prasad who used to write the speeches for Rajiv and Indira Gandhi…
Sharda Prasad was once asked why he, who had seen 2 prime ministers at such close quaters, did not write his memoirs. He reportedly quipped, “A man can become a ghost, but a ghost cannot become a man.”