Today marks the 80th anniversary of Sir Winston Churchill’s famous Iron Curtain speech.

Delivered as a private citizen, the World War 2 prime minister had been booted out of office less than a year prior.

Nevertheless, forever the respected statesman, his words warning of the Soviet threat to the West foreshadowed the oncoming Cold War.

Crucially, Churchill urged Great Britain to strengthen ties with his mother’s birthplace, the United States of America, a liberal democratic capitalist superpower that could stand up to the expansionism of Stalin’s communist totalitarianism in the USSR.

Prominent Churchill historians, Professor Richard Toye and Dr Warren Dockter, are currently co-writing a new book on the World War 2 prime minister and Russia and have made what they believe to be an overlooked discovery, offering further insight and context into his Iron Curtain speech.

Speaking exclusively with the Daily Express, Professor Toye pointed to a statement made by Churchill back in 1923 that he and Dr Dockter “think is significant, but has attracted little, if any, subsequent commentary.”

The Professor of History at the University of Exeter continued: “As far as we can tell, it is not included in the documentary companion volume to the official biography, nor does it appear to be referenced in the catalogue of Churchill’s papers. While it is, of course, impossible to prove that a published statement has never been discussed since, we have not been able to find any engagement with it. As far as we can tell, Churchill said it, it caused a minor flurry, and was then forgotten about.

“This statement [which you can read below] is important as a clear window into Churchill’s thinking at a moment of political transition. It was written shortly after his general election defeat at Dundee, while he was still formally a Liberal and preparing to contest West Leicester for the Liberals later that year, but on the eve of his eventual return to the Conservative Party.”

Published in The Nottingham Evening Post on June 1, 1923 is “Churchill’s Obsessions”, in which the future British prime minister responded to a criticism from WMR Pringle.

Toye shared: “Pringle was a Liberal who opposed Churchill’s recent call for Liberals and Conservatives to sink their differences (in a speech widely interpreted at the time as a proposal for a new centre party). Pringle accused Churchill of harbouring a series of ‘obsessions’, without specifying what they were. Churchill’s response is intriguing because he takes up the charge directly, listing what he regarded as his own ‘obsessions’, while reframing them as matters of principle rather than mere fixation.

At one point, Churchill writes: “A more recent ‘obsession’ is no doubt anti-Bolshevism. Bolshevism was only born six years ago. I was its opponent when it was hailed short-sightedly as the dawn of an era of liberation for the working masses. I am its opponent today, when it is shown that it has only brought them starvation and tyranny at the price of measureless bloodshed and sorrow, while its principal exponents in Russia have become very wealthy capitalists.”

Toye assessed: “Notably, he includes what he terms an anti-Bolshevik obsession, at a point when his advocacy of British intervention in the Russian Civil War was still a recent and controversial memory. We would argue that this provides useful long-term context for understanding the assumptions and anxieties underpinning the 1946 Iron Curtain speech.”

The two Churchill historians discuss this document and its wider ramifications in the first episode of their podcast series Churchill: The Finest Half Hour, which you can listen to here.