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Winston Churchill has been voted the greatest Briton of all time and how many people, I wonder, would want him sat at their dream dinner party table? Andrew Roberts certainly would. He has devoted a great deal of study to this most iconic of Britain’s prime ministers and the London Business Forum (LBF) gathered underground at the Churchill War Rooms to hang on the historian’s every word.

Churchill was, "the classic political hedgehog," suggested Roberts. He understood and warned against the evils of Nazism long before any of his peers, during what were known as his "years in the wilderness." When war broke out in 1939 Churchill was proved right and this gave him the moral power to take the premiership from Neville Chamberlain in 1940.

Churchill’s success as a wartime leader is widely acknowledged. He was able to "inspire a nation" to win World War II. He was, Roberts told the LBF, both morally and physically courageous; he gave a sense of direction - where he led others followed.

Roberts wanted to focus on the power of the spoken word and the role that Churchill’s speeches played in inspiring the nation. Even in today’s society with Twitter and texting, "nothing moves people like a great speech," Roberts asserted. He pointed out that throughout history - from Demosthenes to Barack Obama - talented orators have motivated millions with their speeches.

Churchill, Roberts explained, was not a natural speaker. He learnt early on from an embarrassing experience in the House of Commons that he could not speak without notes. He wrote his notes in what he called "psalm form," which placed the "kernel of the sentence" in the middle of each line that he would deliver. Roberts insisted that Churchill’s speeches were all his own work, he had "no speech writers, no spin doctors, no pollsters" working on them.

His speeches were perfectly pitched for the contemporary climate. In his speeches before the war, Roberts said, Churchill could be "quite hammy." This all changed due to his understanding of the gravitas needed in his speech delivery as a wartime leader. Churchill never used a foreign word where an English one did the job and he mobilised British history, using it to draw on past victories and instil a sense of optimism and British heroism to boost morale. He employed the language of what Roberts called “magnificent abuse” to great effect and was Britain’s most “abusive premier,” uniting his nation in the fight against Hitler who he labelled a “bloodthirsty guttersnipe.”

Of course, this "bloodthirsty guttersnipe" was also moving millions in Germany with his own words and oratorical style. Hitler rallied his audiences with speeches that started quietly, slowly and that were littered with sub clauses but as he progressed he grew louder and faster, while his sentences became shorter and shorter culminating in a massive crescendo.

Roberts’ own successful speech was followed by a plethora of questions from the LBF audience, many of which addressed the myths surrounding Churchill and which Roberts was keen to dispel. Recently, a Guardian article claimed Churchill didn’t smoke, which Roberts believes is just as improbable as the claim that the man who played Larry the Lamb would stand in for Churchill on the radio when he was too busy to deliver a speech.

Another question asked about Churchill’s bouts of depression that the man himself described as “the black dog.” Roberts explained that Churchill was always careful to remain publicly positive even if privately he may have feared the worst. Naturally, Churchill had his limitations as a leader but "he learnt from his mistakes" and, Roberts concluded, what was remarkable "was how few mistakes Churchill made."