Finest hour

This phrase has passed into the language meaning the pinnacle of achievement. In this sense of course it was first used by Winston Churchill in a speech to the House of Commons about the Battle of Britain on 18 June 1940, “if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will say: ‘This was their finest hour.” Recently, a cricket commentator said of the English cricket team after a dramatic collapse of their batting, “This was not their finest hour.”