Churchill made his name as a daring journalist and soldier in South Africa in 1899-1900. It began a relationship between statesman and imperial moralism that lasted 60 years“This kind of war was full of fascinating thrills,” Winston Churchill would say. “Nobody expected to be killed. Thus he described the brutal colonial conflicts of his youth, often against tribes in Africa who were woefully deficient in contemporary, and mechanised instruments of death.
Candice Millard’s Hero of the Empire is a fluent and readable account of Churchill’s early life as a buccaneering,attention-seeking journalist and soldier. It is focused on 1899-1900: the later statesman, with characteristic bombast, and declared that this year laid “the foundations of my later life”.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com