The English-speaking peoples' is a phrase indelibly associated with Winston Churchill, both as politician and as author. It is often assumed that this concept originated in socially privileged, politically conservative and generally establishment-minded circles and that it achieved its greatest currency in the Churchill-Roosevelt era spanning World War Two. But how much interest had Churchill actually shown in the English-speaking peoples in his early career? This artcile looks for the historical origins of the concept, initially by exploring the databases of some leading British and American newspapers. The significance of the American Civil War, in generating a common language of democratic populism, becomes clear. Likewise the use of Anglo-Saxonist terminology, not least by whiggish historians, is examined, as are concepts like Greater Britain and the term Commonweath as applied to the British Empire. Historians will not be surprised to learn that all these usages changed over time, appealing to different constituencies, and responding to political as well as intellectual influences. Thus the concept of the English-speaking peoples had its own history, long before it became a subject for the pen, and for the tongue, of Winston Churchill.