Churchill Wanted Dead or Alive

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY JAN 3, 2000

A bestseller in the U.K., this portrait of Winston Churchill, written by his granddaughter, unapologetically presents the future prime minister as an action hero in the Boer War. It's rousing reading. Sandys's affection for her grandfather is obvious, but she shows enough of his grandiosity to maintain a reader's trust. In October 1899, at the age of 25, already having seen significant action in India and Cuba, Churchill went to South Africa as a journalist and eventually enlisted to serve. His brashness and his combat experience made him a headache for military commanders. Churchill was captured by the Boers (hence the title) and escaped by climbing out a latrine window. This episode has always been controversial (it figured prominently in Churchill's early p0litical battles) because, although Churchill fulfilled an officer's duty to try to escape, two other officers claimed that he left them behind and compromised their chances for escape. Sandys (From Winston with Love) maintains that her grandfather simply seized an opportunity. Amazingly, Churchill was never injured, though shrapnel and bullets frequently whizzed by his head. Of his disregard for bullets, he wrote, apparently only half in jest, to his mother: "I am so conceited I do not believe the Gods would create so potent a being as myself for so prosaic an ending." The book ends with Churchill returning to England and winning a Conservative seat in parliament two months short of his 26th birthday. Sandys is fully aware of the extent to which her grandfather had a finger to the political winds during his exploits: he sought the limelight as aggressively as he chased adventure. Because of Sandys's brisk narrative, as well as their knowledge of the man Churchill later became, readers will not hold young Winston's ambition against him.