I should start this review by saying that I knew next to nothing about Winston Churchill before reading this book. I knew even less about the Boer War.
That being said, Winston Churchill was a real badass. Other good descriptors would be, “arrogant”, “obnoxious”, “tenacious”, and “remarkably lucky”. He contained multitudes.
This book profiles Churchill’s life during early war campaigns and through the end of the Boer War. He was interested in war not because of the righteousness of the cause but because he saw it as a way to gain glory. Having failed repeatedly in gaining acclaim on the battlefield he gave up his commission and tried to enter politics but was unsuccessful. When the Boer War began, Churchill was able to find a job as a writer. A train ambush leads to his capture as a prisoner of war. I appreciate that the author focuses not only on the heroic aspects of her subject, but also on his less charming characteristics. To be frank, there are long stretches of this book that would make one wonder why anybody would put up with Churchill’s overbearing and entitled personality. The man spent weeks sulking until he was physically quite weak and then hijacked his friends’ escape plan and left them in the POW camp. The guards were alerted when his private barber was unable to find him for a trim (war sure has changed). And yet he could command the attention of more experienced and higher-ranking officers through sheer force of will; he later counted as a friend the Boer captain who captured him after the train attack.
This book was an easy read, though not a quick one. I now know more facts about Churchill than I previously did- at least in this very short span of his life- but not much really about what made him tick other than needing acclaim.