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Candice Millard

Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill Paperback – Large Print, September 20, 2016

by Candice Millard (Author)

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From New York Times bestselling author of Destiny of the Republic and The River of Doubt, a thrilling narrative of Winston Churchill's extraordinary and little-known exploits during the Boer War

At age twenty-four, Winston Churchill was utterly convinced it was his destiny to become prime minister of England one day, despite the fact he had just lost his first election campaign for Parliament. He believed that to achieve his goal he must do something spectacular on the battlefield. Despite deliberately putting himself in extreme danger as a British Army officer in colonial wars in India and Sudan, and as a journalist covering a Cuban uprising against the Spanish, glory and fame had eluded him.

Churchill arrived in South Africa in 1899, valet and crates of vintage wine in tow, there to cover the brutal colonial war the British were fighting with Boer rebels. But just two weeks after his arrival, the soldiers he was accompanying on an armored train were ambushed, and Churchill was taken prisoner. Remarkably, he pulled off a daring escape--but then had to traverse hundreds of miles of enemy territory, alone, with nothing but a crumpled wad of cash, four slabs of chocolate, and his wits to guide him.

The story of his escape is incredible enough, but then Churchill enlisted, returned to South Africa, fought in several battles, and ultimately liberated the men with whom he had been imprisoned.

Churchill would later remark that this period, "could I have seen my future, was to lay the foundations of my later life." Millard spins an epic story of bravery, savagery, and chance encounters with a cast of historical characters—including Rudyard Kipling, Lord Kitchener, and Mohandas Gandhi—with whom he would later share the world stage. But Hero of the Empire is more than an adventure story, for the lessons Churchill took from the Boer War would profoundly affect 20th century history.

Print length

640 pages
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English
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Random House Large Print
Publication date

September 20, 2016
Dimensions

6.1 x 1.4 x 9.2 inches
ISBN-10

0804194890
ISBN-13

978-0804194891
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Editorial Reviews

Review

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Chosen as a Washington Post and New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2016

"A thrilling account...This book is an awesome nail-biter and top-notch character study rolled into one...Could someone be persuaded to make a movie about this episode of his life? I’d watch."
—New York Times Critic Jennifer Senior's Top Ten Books of 2016

“Gripping…tremendously readable and enjoyable…”
—Alex von Tunzelmann, The New York Times Book Review

"[A] truly fascinating book."
—Financial Times

"A gripping story...It's a thrilling journey and Millard tells it with gusto."
—The Guardian

“Millard’s tome is a slam-bang study of Churchill’s wit and wile as he navigates the Boer War like [a] proto-James Bond.”
—USA Today

About the Author

CANDICE MILLARD is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The River of Doubt and Destiny of the Republic. She lives in Kansas City with her husband and three children.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Prologue

Crouching in darkness outside the prison fence in wartime southern Africa, Winston Churchill could still hear the voices of the guards on the other side. Seizing his chance an hour earlier, the twenty-five-year-old had scaled the high, corrugated-iron paling that enclosed the prison yard. But now he was trapped in a new dilemma. He could not remain where he was. At any moment, he could be discovered and shot by the guards or by the soldiers who patrolled the dark, surrounding streets of Pretoria, the capital of the enemy Boer republic. Yet neither could he run. His hopes for survival depended on two other prisoners, who were still inside the wall. In the long minutes since he had dropped down into the darkness, they had not appeared.

From the moment he had been taken as a prisoner of war, Churchill had dreamed of reclaiming his freedom, hatching scheme after scheme, each more elaborate than the last. In the end, however, the plan that had actually brought him over the fence was not his own. The two other English prisoners had plotted the escape, and agreed only with great reluctance to bring him along. They also carried the provisions that were supposed to sustain all three of them as they tried to cross nearly three hundred miles of enemy territory. Unable even to climb back into his hated captivity, Churchill found himself alone, hiding in the low, ragged shrubs that lined the fence, with no idea what to do next.

Although he was still a very young man, Churchill was no stranger to situations of great personal peril. He had already taken part in four wars on three different continents, and had come close to death in each one. He had felt bullets whistling by his head in Cuba, seen friends hacked to death in British India, been separated from his regiment in the deserts of the Sudan and, just a month earlier, in November 1899, at the start of the Boer War, led the resistance against a devastating attack on an armored train. Several men had died in that attack, blown to pieces by shells and a deafening barrage of bullets, many more had been horribly wounded, and Churchill had barely escaped with his life. To his fury and deep frustration, however, he had not eluded capture. He, along with dozens of British officers and soldiers, had been taken prisoner by the Boers—the tough, largely Dutch-speaking settlers who had been living in southern Africa for centuries and were not about to let the British Empire take their land without a fight.

When the Boers had realized that they had captured the son of Lord Randolph Churchill, a former Chancellor of the Exchequer and a member of the highest ranks of the British aristocracy, they had been thrilled. Churchill had been quickly transported to a POW camp in Pretoria, the Boer capital, where he had been imprisoned with about a hundred other men. Since that day, he had been able to think of nothing but escape, and returning to the war.

The Boer War had turned out to be far more difficult and more devastating than the amusing colonial war the British had expected. Their army, one of the most admired and feared fighting forces in the world, was astonished to find itself struggling to hold its own against a little-known republic on a continent that most Europeans considered to be theirs for the taking. Already, the British had learned more from this war than almost any other. Slowly, they were realizing that they had entered a new age of warfare. The days of gallant young soldiers wearing bright red coats had suddenly disappeared, leaving the vaunted British army to face an invisible enemy with weapons so powerful they could wreak carnage without ever getting close enough to look their victims in the eye.

Long before it was over, the war would also change the empire in another, equally indelible way: It would bring to the attention of a rapt British public a young man named Winston Churchill. Although he had tried again and again, in war after war, to win glory, Churchill had returned home every time without the medals that mattered, no more distinguished or famous than he had been when he set out. The Boer War, he believed, was his best chance to change that, to prove that he was not just the son of a famous man. He was special, even extraordinary, and he was meant not just to fight for his country but one day lead it. Although he believed this without question, he still had to convince everyone else, something he would never be able to do from a POW camp in Pretoria.

When Churchill had scrambled over the prison fence, seizing his chance after a nearby guard had turned his back, he felt elated. Now, as he kneeled in the shrubs just outside, waiting helplessly for the other men, his desperation mounted with each passing minute. Finally, he heard a British voice. Churchill realized with a surge of relief that it was one of his co-conspirators. “It’s all up,” the man whispered. The guard was suspicious, watching their every move. They could not get out. “Can you get back in?” the other prisoner asked.

Both men knew the answer. As they stood on opposite sides of the fence, one still in captivity, the other achingly close to freedom, it was painfully apparent that Churchill could not undo what had already been done. It would have been impossible for him to climb back into the prison enclosure without being caught, and the punishment for his escape would have been immediate and possibly fatal.

In all the time he had spent thinking about his escape since arriving in Pretoria, the one scenario that Churchill had not envisioned was crossing enemy territory alone without companions or provisions of any kind. He didn’t have a weapon, a map, a compass, or, aside from a few bars of chocolate in his pocket, any food. He didn’t speak the language, either that of the Boers or that of the Africans. Beyond the vaguest of outlines, he didn’t even have a plan—just the unshakable conviction that he was destined for greatness.

Part One

Pushful, the Younger

Chapter 1 - Death by Inches

From earliest childhood, Churchill had been fascinated by war, and dreamed of gallantry in battle. “There is no ambition I cherish so keenly,” he had confided to his younger brother, Jack, “as to gain a reputation for personal courage.”

As a boy, he had collected a miniature army of fifteen hundred toy soldiers and spent hours sending them into combat. “From very early youth I had brooded about soldiers and war, and often I had imagined in dreams and day-dreams the sensations attendant upon being for the first time under fire,” he wrote. “It seemed to my youthful mind that it must be a thrilling and immense experience to hear the whistle of bullets all around and to play at hazard from moment to moment with death and wounds.” At Sandhurst, the Royal Military College, from which he had graduated in 1894, Churchill had loved nothing more than to participate in war games, regretting only “that it all had to be make-believe.”

To be an aristocratic Englishman in the late nineteenth century meant being surrounded not merely by the lavish benefits of imperial power but by its equally vast responsibilities. Covering more than a fifth of the world’s land surface, the British Empire had come to rule about a quarter of the human race—more than 450 million people living on every continent and on the islands of every ocean. It was the largest empire ever known, easily outranking the once mighty Spanish Empire, which had been the original object of the awe-filled description “the empire on which the sun never sets.” It was five times the size of the Roman Empire at its zenith, and its influence—over people, language, money, even time, for the clocks in every time zone were set to Greenwich mean time—was unrivaled.

By the time Churchill reached adulthood, the greatest threat to the empire no longer came from the other major powers—Spain, Portugal, Germany or France—but from the ever-expanding burden of ruling its own colonies. Although long the object of admiration, envy and fear, the British army had been stretched impossibly thin as it struggled to keep the empire intact, crisscrossing continents and oceans to put down revolts everywhere from Egypt to Ireland.

To Churchill, such far-flung conflicts offered an irresistible opportunity for personal glory and advancement. When he entered the British army and finally became a soldier, with the real possibility of dying in combat, Churchill’s enthusiasm for war did not waver. On the contrary, he had written to his mother that he looked forward to battle “not so much in spite of as because of the risks I run.” What he wanted most from his life as a soldier was not adventure or even battlefield experience but a chance to prove himself. He wanted not simply to fight but to be noticed while fighting.

For a member of Churchill’s high social class, such bold, unabashed ambition was a novelty, if not an outright scandal. He had been born a British nobleman, a direct descendant of John Churchill, the 1st Duke of Marlborough, his parents personal friends of the Prince of Wales, Queen Victoria’s oldest son and heir. Yet in his open pursuit of fame and popular favor, Churchill seemed far less Victorian than Rooseveltian. “The immortal Barnum himself had not a greater gift for making himself and his affairs the talk of the world,” his first biographer, Alexander MacCallum Scott, would write just a few years later. “Winston advertises himself as simply and unconsciously as he breathes.”

In a world in which men were praised not just for their stiff upper lip but for extreme modesty when it came to their own achievements, Churchill was widely criticized for being that most offensive of creatures, the medal hunter. He was called a “self-advertiser,” a “young whippersnapper,” even, by a reporter for the Daily Chronicle, “Pushful, the Younger.” He was not unaware of these criticisms and even years later, bewildered by the viciousness with which he was attacked, would admit that it was “melancholy to be forced to record these less amiable aspects of human nature, which by a most curious and indeed unaccountable coincidence have always seemed to present themselves in the wake of my innocent footsteps.” He was not, however, about to let them slow him down.

Churchill knew that the surest and quickest route to recognition, success and perhaps, if he was lucky, fame was a military medal. It was “the swift road to promotion and advancement in every arm,” he wrote, “the glittering gateway to distinction.” Distinction, in turn, could be parlayed into political clout, opening a door onto the kind of public life that he longed for, and which he believed was his destiny. So while the military was not, for Churchill, an end in itself, it was certainly a very useful means to an end. What he needed was a battle, a serious battle, one that would be talked about, would be remembered, and, with a good dose of courage and a little showmanship on his part, might propel him to the forefront of the military stage. For that, he was willing to risk anything, even his life.

Churchill had seen real fighting for the first time in 1895. Instead of spending his leave playing polo or foxhunting like most young officers, he had gone to Cuba as a military observer, joining a fighting column of the Spanish army during an uprising that was a prelude to the Spanish-American War. It was here that he began smoking cigars, giving birth to a lifelong habit and a distinct preference for Cubanos. It was also here that on his twenty-first birthday he heard for the first time “bullets strike flesh.” In fact, he had very nearly been killed by a bullet that, by the capriciousness of fate, had sailed just a foot past his head, striking and killing the horse standing next to him. In Cuba, however, he had been only an observer, not an active participant, and for Churchill that would never be enough.

Churchill’s true education in the harsh realities of Britain’s colonial wars began the next year, in the remote mountains of British India’s North-West Frontier, modern-day Pakistan, whose sweeping vistas, unforgiving beauty and lethal conflicts would later suggest powerful parallels to those of southern Africa. For the British army, no colony had been more difficult to subdue than India, the jewel in the empire’s crown, and no part of India had proved more deadly for British soldiers than the tribal lands of the Pashtun, an ethnic group renowned for their military skill and unyielding resistance to outside control.

It was, in fact, the Pashtun’s unmatched ferocity in battle that drew Churchill to India, and to the Pashtun heartland known as Malakand. In October 1896, Churchill had arrived in India with his regiment, the Fourth Queen’s Own Hussars. He had come hoping to find himself quickly at the center of action. Instead, he had spent month after frustrating month in Bangalore, which he irritably described to his mother as a “3rd rate watering place.”

The incredible luxury in which he lived had made little difference. Left to find their own lodgings, Churchill and two fellow officers had chosen what Churchill described to his mother as “a magnificent pink and white stucco palace in the middle of a large and beautiful garden.” They paid for this lavish abode by combining their salaries, given to them in silver rupees poured into a string net bag “as big as a prize turnip,” with any allowance they managed to pry from dwindling family fortunes.

Like some of his fellow officers, Churchill came from a family that was rich in titles and grand estates, but little else. The Churchill family palace, Blenheim, was, like most great houses in England at the end of the nineteenth century, hovering on the brink of collapse. The 5th and 6th Dukes of Marlborough had lived lives of such extravagance that when Churchill’s grandfather inherited the title and the palace, he had been forced to sell not just land but some of the treasures that the family held most dear. In 1875, when Churchill was not yet a year old, the 7th Duke sold the Marlborough Gems, a stunning assortment of more than 730 carved gemstones, for more than £36,000. A few years later, despite the protestations of his family, he sold the Sunderland Library, a vast and historically significant collection.

The most effective means the Churchills had found of keeping the palace from going under, however, had been to marry the successive dukes off to “dollar princesses,” enormously wealthy heiresses whose families longed for an old British title to burnish their new American money. Soon after becoming the 8th Duke, Churchill’s uncle George Spencer-Churchill, whose first wife divorced him in the wake of an affair, married a wealthy New York widow named Lillian Warren Hamersley. His son, now the 9th Duke, dutifully followed in his footsteps, marrying a dollar princess of his own, the American railroad heiress Consuelo Vanderbilt, in 1895.

Despite his family’s financial failings, Churchill was accustomed to a lavish lifestyle, and he hired a veritable army of servants while in India. “We each have a ‘Butler’ whose duties are to wait at table—to manage the household and to supervise the stables: A First Dressing Boy or valet who is assisted by a second DB: and a sais [syce] to every horse or pony,” Churchill had coolly explained to his mother. “Besides this we share the services of 2 gardenders [sic]—3 Bhistis or water carriers—4 Dhobies or washermen & 1 watchman. Such is our ménage.”

When a Pashtun revolt began in the mountains of Malakand the next year, Churchill, bored and restless, had been on leave in London, at the world-famous Goodwood Racecourse. It was a perfect day, the racecourse was so beautiful that the Prince of Wales referred to it as a “garden party with racing tacked on,” and Churchill was “winning my money.” As soon as he learned of the revolt, however, Churchill knew that this was the opportunity he had been waiting for, and he was not about to waste a moment or wait for an invitation.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Random House Large Print; Large type / Large print edition (September 20, 2016)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 640 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0804194890
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0804194891
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.28 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.1 x 1.4 x 9.2 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,388,773 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Candice Millard

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Candice Millard is the author of three books, all New York Times bestsellers and named one of the best books of the year by publications from the New York Times to the Washington Post. Her first book, The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey, was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection and a Book Sense Pick, won the William Rockhill Nelson Award and was a finalist for the Quill Awards. It has been printed in Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese and Korean, as well as a British edition. Millard's second book, Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine & the Murder of a President, won the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime, the PEN Center USA award for Research Nonfiction, the One Book-One Lincoln Award, the Ohioana Award and the Kansas Notable Book Award. Her most recent book, Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape and the Making of Winston Churchill, was an Indie Next pick, a top ten critics pick by the New York Times and named Amazon’s number one history book of 2016. Millard's work has also appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Washington Post Book World, the Guardian, National Geographic and Time magazine. She lives in Kansas City with her husband and three children.

You can follow Candice Millard on Twitter at @candice_millard and on Facebook @CandiceMillardauthor.

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Don Graeter

A WELL WRITTEN TALE, BUT ONE PLAGUED BY ERRORS, CONTRADICTIONS AND STRANGE OMISSIONS.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 13, 2017

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Churchill's Boer War experiences have been the subject of multiple Churchill memoirs, a book, a feature length film & a PBS documentary. Many Churchill biographies devote lengthy sections to the topic, most recently Simon Read's 2015 Winston Churchill Reporting (96 pp.)

What does Candice Millard have to add to the oft told tale? Well, a little bit. A positive of this work is that it includes additional detail not usually found in the story, though strictly with regard to peripheral matters: Boer leaders, those who aided Churchill's escape, etc. The best addition is an explanation of the mental state of prisoners of war.

Millard also shows an excellent narrative writing capability. She tells the story of the armored train incident and Churchill's capture and escape very well.

Despite these positives, the book deserves only 2 stars (at best). Its inaccuracies and contradictions are numerous, central to the "Hero" (Churchill) and undermine the primary tenets of the author's thesis.

Churchill was a complex man continually involved in complex affairs. He also operated within a complex political system which varied considerably from the American system. It is no surprise that the author struggles in her effort to master both the facts of Churchill's personal story & the British parliamentary system of the late 1890's. She was trained as a journalist, rather than as a historian, and this is only her third book. The first two dealt with American political figures.

The author's thesis is three pronged:

(1) Despite his high risk efforts to win medals in combat in order to make a name for himself in order to launch his political career, Churchill had "failed to win the medals that mattered," had returned from each war "no more distinguished or famous than when he left," and was just another inconsequential son of an aristocratic family. He was, thus, "desperate" to find another war and "a serious battle" in which he could distinguish himself.

(2) Churchill's electoral failure in the 1898 Oldham bye-election was due to his impatience. He had run for Parliament before he was "ready."

(3) The Boer War transformed Churchill in a way that prepared him to win on his next try in the 1899 general election and become the man he became.

The author fails to substantiate the first two and does not even try on the third. There is no question that Churchill became a "Hero of the Empire" due to this episode. It did not, however, make him a different man than he had been. It was critically important, turning a 1.6% electoral loss in 1898 into a narrow 1899 win of less than one half of 1%. (A 23.6% losing share in 1898 turned into a 25.30% winning share in 1899--a razor thin 222 vote win.) The author tries hard to embellish the story beyond that and severely damages the credibility of the book in the process.

The book's credibility is also badly damaged by irrelevant material, glaring contradictions, myriad errors and puzzling gaps in the story. The latter three are all serious problems, dealing, as they do, with Churchill himself. Specifics follow:

Irrelevant material--

The author appears to lack confidence in both her grasp of the details of Churchill's life and her ability to support her thesis. Her response appears to be to fill space with "background" on matters peripheral and even irrelevant to the central story. For example, there are multi page digressions into Shaka Zulu and Gandhi, neither of whom have anything to do with Churchill. Shaka was long dead by this time and even the Zulu generally did not figure into Churchill's story. It is worth noting that Gandhi was a leader of stretcher bearers in the Boer War, but he had nothing to do with Churchill's Boer War either.

Major gaps in the relevant material:

Following Churchill's escape & return to action, he had multiple adventures which are overlooked. He was at the bloody battle of Spion Kop. This is mentioned only in passing without any of the interesting details.

Later, Churchill had a miraculous escape when his horse bolted leaving him trapped in open ground at the mercy of the Boers. He was saved when a lone British scout came around a hill & gave him a leg up as they rode for dear life under Boer fire.

An egregious omission is the story of Churchill's heroics at the Battle of Diamond Hill. His general, Ian Hamilton, tried to have Churchill awarded the Victoria Cross for valor only to be rebuffed by Lord Roberts and Kitchener, both of whom disliked the brash youngster.

Perhaps the most astonishing omission is the tale of the multi year dispute between Churchill and Haldane regarding Churchill's solo escape from the prison camp after all three would be escapees had tried and failed. That is the major controversy of the entire story.

Why would multi page digressions into figures irrelevant to Churchill's story be included while a major controversy, Victoria Cross worthy heroics and a miraculous escape, all be omitted?

Contradictions:

If Churchill was so "desperate" for a battle in which to win military glory, then why did he resign his Army commission? How was he to win a medal as a civilian? No answer is provided.

(The reason was twofold. 1) Churchill's finances were in urgent need of repair. A cavalry officer's financial obligations were significant and resigning would substantially reduce Churchill's living expenses. Also, his writing career earned him a multiple of his army pay and being a full time correspondent & writer would allow him to devote even more time to this more lucrative pursuit.

Further, contrary to the author's contention, Churchill was no longer a nobody "desperate" for the right medal by the time of his resignation. He had already made quite a name for himself with his combat service, war reporting, and his books. This fact, plus his performance in public speaking, marked him as a "comer" and were, in addition to his family name, the reasons the Tory party elders chose him as the party nominee for a seat.)

If Churchill was as "unknown" as the author claims, why does she tell us just the opposite later in the text? For example:

A. Page 99--(Churchill) was "...well known, and widely believed to be on his way to Parliament, if not 10 Downing Street..."

B. Pages 59-60--The reader is told that Churchill had become the most sought after and highly paid war correspondent in Britain by the eve of the Boer War, having catapulted past the likes of Kipling and Conan Doyle.

Which is it? Was he unknown or well known? Unknown or the most in demand war correspondent in the land thought to be on his to Parliament and even Downing Street?

Errors (a partial list):

1) Pg 9--Churchill "began smoking cigars" in Cuba in 1895. While his taste for cigars, especially Cubans, was likely enhanced, this was neither his first time to smoke either cigars in general or cubanos in particular. See Hal Klepak's Churchill Comes of Age: Cuba 1895, pages 168-170.

2). Pg 20--The author leads the reader to believe that Churchill had secured assignment to the Sudan Campaign through "no less than the prime minister." Not so. He was attached to the 21st Lancers, not by the PM, Lord Salisbury, whose attempt was rebuffed by General Kitchener, but by the Adjutant General, Sir Evelyn Wood. Kitchener had the final say on additions to his campaign but Wood had authority to fill vacancies in British army units such as the 21st Lancers. When a vacancy occurred in the Lancers, Wood filled it with Churchill. The 21st Lancers were already part of the campaign as a unit. Hence, Churchill was off to join both the 21st Lancers and the campaign.

3) Page 20--The author states that the Sudan campaign was aimed at "Al-Mahdi" and his followers. That is incorrect. "The Mahdi" was Muhammad Ahmad, who led the siege of Khartoum which felled General Gordon in 1885. Ahmad died later in 1885 and was succeeded by his lieutenant, Abdullah bin Muhammad, known as "The Khalifa" or "Caliph." He was the target of the Kitchener campaign, not "Al-Mahdi."

4) Page 32--Churchill had a "uniquely powerful mother." That is rank hyperbole and misleading. Jennie held no position of authority or "power." She KNEW powerful people and could often get their ear. That was worth a lot, but it was far from having power.

5) Page 97--Churchill was "particularly furious" when he arrived in Egypt bound for the Sudan upon finding that "the position that had been promised to him had already been given to another man." How misleading! Churchill neither "lost his place" nor was he "furious." Both are fabrications.

The 21st Lancers had three squadrons--A,B & C. Churchill was to be assigned to B. There was also a vacancy in A. B & C pulled out of Cairo for the Sudan before Churchill arrived. Since LT Robert Grenfell, who was to take the A vacancy, was already on site, the assignments were swapped and Churchill wound up with A and Grenfell with B. Churchill and A Squadron caught up with the others before the Battle of Omdurman. All three squadrons fought alongside each other in the famous cavalry charge. The swap cost Churchill nothing.

The author cites Churchill's My Early Life for the statement that he was "furious," but it says nothing of the sort. Churchill simply notes that B & C had pulled out of Cairo by the time of his arrival, so he switched squadrons with Grenfell. Saying he was "furious" appears to be pure embellishment and is disturbing.

6) The author claims that, from the armored train, Churchill and Haldane saw Boers with wagons pulling what had to be field guns. The cited source is Churchill's London to Ladysmith and his My Early Life. Both tell of seeing Boers in the distance but neither mentions wagons or field guns. Thomas Pakenham's The Boer War, cited elsewhere by the author, points out that no evidence of guns was seen and that Haldane pushed further north in the mistaken belief that there were no Boer field guns nearby.

7) The author completely misunderstands the nature of Churchill's first Oldham political race in 1898, claiming that he lost because he was not yet "ready." That was just not the case.

The British system is controlled by the parties to a much greater extent and voters vote the party, rather than the individual candidate, to a much higher degree than in the US. Churchill lost the 1898 race for two reasons: 1) Oldham was a working class district and, as such, Liberal party leaning; 2) The national Tory party was pushing a "clerical tithes bill" which was very unpopular in the district. These are the reasons Churchill suffered a close loss, not his lack of "readiness." He actually ran ahead of the other Tory party candidate in the two seat race, coming in third to the two Liberal candidates by only 1,293 votes (about 2.5%.)

The British inclination to vote the party accounts for why Churchill, despite his new "Hero" status, moved the needle only slightly in the 1899 general election. Critically, it was enough to eke out a narrow win. The author embellishes again here at page 313, saying "They all did vote for Churchill the next time, or at least enough (to win)." She emphasizes the fact that Churchill came in second only 16 votes behind the first place Liberal. True, but he also came in second only 222 votes ahead of the third place Liberal-a margin of less than .5 percent.

The author appears to want to leave the impression that his new "hero" status and alleged personal transformation after the Boer War propelled Churchill to a substantial victory in 1899. That appears to be yet another instance of embellishment in pursuit of a more exciting story. The real story is adequately exciting on its own. The author and the reader would have been much better served by a proper explanation of the realities of the British electoral system which pointed out how difficult it was for an individual candidate to run ahead of his party. That would have given proper context to Churchill's narrow victory--a story just as dramatic.

With her writing ability the author could have produced a very fine addition to the voluminous Churchill library. Instead, she has produced a well told story, but one which fails as history due to numerous inaccuracies and omissions and startling contradictions. Of most concern is that she appears more than ready to embellish the story in multiple spots to make her tale more dramatic.

I enjoy reading this author. I hope she keeps at it, but with a renewed commitment to telling history both accurately and completely.

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T. Graczewski

Another Millard Classic

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 4, 2021

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Nobody does it quite like Candice Millard. She finds relatively obscure historical events – the assassination of President Garfield, the Amazon adventure of former President Teddy Roosevelt, and here the young exploits of Winston Churchill in South Africa – and turns them into absolutely top-notch popular history. Her narratives are compulsively readable. My only complaint is that she hasn’t written more.

Young Winston Churchill was, to put it mildly, a man on the make. “There is no ambition I cherish so keenly,” he told his younger brother, Jack, “as to gain a reputation for personal courage.” He was as good as his word. Before he was 24-years-old he had experienced close order combat in Cuba as a journalist observer, seen comrades hacked to pieces by Pashtun warriors in Malakand on the Afghan border, and became separated from his regiment in the desert sands of Sudan in the war against the Mahdi.

But it wasn’t enough. “[Churchill] wanted not simply to fight,” writes Millard, “but to be noticed while fighting.” He was, in short, a “medal hunter.” And none of his previous adventures had resulted in the public acclaim that he so hungered for. Churchill was, Millard stresses, quite literally willing to risk his life for fame and glory. After defeat in his first stand for election to the House of Commons in 1899, Churchill seized on the conflict in South Africa as the stage upon which he might finally achieve his seemingly unlimited ambitions.

Churchill would join the war not as a soldier but as a war correspondent for a respected British daily newspaper, the Morning Post. And he was not just any war correspondent, however, but the most highly paid one in England. Despite his youth and relative inexperience he had established a strong reputation as a fearless man with an unusual skill as a writer. In the glowing words of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the young Churchill was “the greatest living master of English prose.”

Churchill left for the front on the same boat that carried the recently appointed British general in chief, General Redvers Buller. The dashing young war correspondent was intent on beating the 30,000 British reinforcements to the front. Many in the British Army at first held a low opinion of their Boer adversary, but not Churchill, who wrote that they were “the finest mass of rifle-armed horsemen ever seen and the most capable mounted warriors since the Mongols.”

Through a mix of pluck and ingenuity, Churchill had placed himself about as far forward as was humanly possible for a young British war correspondent in South Africa in late 1899: the small outpost town of Estcourt some 50 miles south of the British forces besieged at Ladysmith in Natal Province. In hopes of getting an even closer look at the fighting – and hopefully finally setting his eyes on a real Boer fighter – he volunteered to accompany a dangerous (and relatively pointless) armored train expedition out of Estcourt in the direction of Ladysmith. The venture was an unmitigated disaster for the British as the Boers effectively ambushed the train on its way back to Estcourt, killing five and taking 60 prisoners, the intrepid journalist Winston Churchill among them.

The Boer ambush of the armored train and Churchill’s conspicuous gallantry in the ensuing melee were front-page news all across England. “He had become not only the talk of the city but the subject of widespread praise and admiration,” Millard writes, “something he had long felt deserving of, but had certainly never been before.” Unfortunately, Churchill was in no position to enjoy his newfound fame. He vehemently protested his imprisonment, arguing that he was a journalist and civilian non-combatant. The Boers, however, were not about to release so famous a captive as the son of a British Lord, especially one who had famously maligned the Boers in the past.

Millard writes that Churchill absolutely detested captivity and the slovenly guards assigned to prevent his escape from their makeshift POW camp in Pretoria. “[From] the moment he had raised his hands he had hated his captivity with an intensity that surprised even him … So much did Churchill loathe his imprisonment that the experience would stay with him for the rest of his life.” All he could think about was escape, no matter the dangers involved.

On December 12, 1899, after a month in captivity, Churchill dashed over the back wall of the prison. His two fellow accomplices were unable to join him. He would have to fight his way through 300 miles of hostile Transvaal territory on his own. “Failure being almost certain,” Churchill later wrote, “no odds against success affected me. All risks were less than the certainty.”

The situation for the British in South Africa was bleak in late 1899. Anticipation of a quick and easy victory were dashed by a series of shocking defeats during a short period known as Black Week, none bigger than General Buller’s decisive defeat against Luis Botha at the Battle of Colenso on December 15, 1899. General Buller, nicknamed “the Steamroller,” was unceremoniously sacked after just three months in South Africa. The British, Millard writes, were desperate for heroes. News of Churchill’s dramatic escape from captivity and his treacherous overland flight to safety were just what the British public needed.

Churchill’s saga was again front-page news. He was, Millard says, exactly what the British wanted in their heroes – “resilient, resourceful and, even in the face of extreme danger, utterly unruffled.” After stowing away on a train for some 70 miles east of Pretoria, he debarked to find himself, quite miraculously, in the midst of British men operating a coalmine in the Transvaal. At much personal risk, his countrymen kept Churchill hidden away in a rat-invested mineshaft for nearly a week before arranging for him to be spirited away on a train headed to Portuguese East Africa (modern day Mozambique) hidden in a giant spool of wool. It really is an almost unbelievable adventure tale. Churchill arrived in Durban, Natal’s largest city, on 23 December to a raucous hero’s welcome. After two full weeks on the run, he was finally safe and, indeed, the “Hero of the Empire.”

Churchill leveraged his newfound fame to the fullest, somehow finagling an Army commission as a lieutenant in the South African Light Horse while retaining his role as foreign war correspondent for the Morning Post. He was present at the Battle of Spion Kop outside of the Ladysmith on 23 January 1900, one of the bloodiest fights of the war that left 600 dead and 1,500 wounded. He was also present for the British capture of Pretoria and the liberation of his POW camp in June 1900. Churchill returned to England and was easily elected to Parliament in the same district where he was defeated in 1899. His remarkable career was on its way; his election no doubt owing to his South African exploits.

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Frances Harvey

Wonderful Winston

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on April 2, 2018

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What is not to love about this book. Any age can read it as it is a part of history not just Winston but England and South Africa and bravery. Here is a man that knew he would survive whatever he engaged in. A very very brave man and there is no one to follow in his footsteps. He love England to the very end.

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eastwoods

excellent service

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 8, 2019

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excactly as described couldn't be happier

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Kindle Customer

Surprising

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on January 23, 2017

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Following Manchester's classic Goodbye Darkness I tried to read The Last Lion. I failed but largely because I was too young. This book reads like a classic boys own adventure. This book was over too soon a few things occurred. First I got a way better understanding of the Boers particularly Both and their brilliance on the battlefield. Second it made me want to pick up the Last Lion 30 years later. This was an excellent book

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Duccio

Interessante biografia che si legge quasi come un romanzo d'avventura!

Reviewed in Italy 🇮🇹 on October 29, 2016

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Molto interessante sia la vita di Churchill da giovane che la guerra contro i Boeri della quale sapevo ben poco, salvo qualche reminiscenza di storia del liceo e la "mistics" Scout!

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Ken

Once you open the book, you won’t want to put it down.

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on November 15, 2021

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Uncovers a rarely discussed period of Churchill’s life. Also gives a brief introduction to the 2nd Boer War

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