Churchill speech set to music for RAF album

One of Winston Churchill’s most stirring speeches will be set to music as the RAF aims for the charts.

The wartime leader’s tribute to The Few – the aircrew who successfully fought off the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain – will appear on a new album by the Central Band of the RAF.

Members of the band signed a record contract on the wing of a Spitfire fighter plane at the RAF Museum in London.

The album, which will be released this autumn, will also include versions of the Dambusters March and Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines.

Victory in the Battle of Britain, which began on July 10, 1940 and ended on October 31 that year, helped wreck Hitler’s invasion plans and laid the foundations for Allied victory five years later.

It was celebrated in Sir Winston Churchill’s speech of August 20, 1940, when he told MPs: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”

Last Friday, a Hurricane and a Spitfire flew over London to mark 70 years to the day since Sir Winston made the speech.

Record label Decca are hoping the album will repeat the success of last year when Dame Vera Lynn hit the top spot with We’ll Meet Again – The Very Best of Vera Lynn.