Churchill’s Youth

Young Winston 12 decades ago—and a speculation about just how rough his escape became at South Africa’s Witbank colliery.

A delightful happenstance came my way in Australia recently. My company builds and runs prisons under contract to various governments. I  was visiting a new prison we are building in New South Wales, near a town called Grafton on the Clarence River. Whilst touring this new and rather wonderful facility, I was stopped by the project manager. He asked if I were aware of the connection between Grafton and my grandfather, Sir Winston Churchill. I confessed I was not aware of any, so he took me down to the River Clarence, and showed me the broken hulk of a ship called Induna. She was the coaster that transported young Winston Churchill from Lourenço Marques, Portuguese East Africa (now Maputo, Mozambique) to Durban, South Africa after his dramatic escape from the Boers in December 1899.

In late 1899, Winston Churchill was catapulted to prominence following the famous armoured train attack and his subsequent escape from a Boer prison camp. His adventures fostered long-lasting controversy. A very hostile account was written as late as 1994. This essay was first published by John Hussey in 1999. So far as he and we know, no further discoveries have been made to dispute his conclusions.

Lecture offers started arriving while Churchill was still in South Africa. The first was from Major J. B. Pond, an American agent, in March 1900. English offers followed. His South Africa exploits gave a ready subject: “The War as I Saw It.” Of course, speaking was only a temporary activity, to earn money for his political career, for Members of Parliament were not salaried until 1911. This became crucial after Churchill, as predicted, was elected MP for Oldham on 1 October 1900.

Fresh aspects of Churchill’s reception at Durban and transcripts of his speeches: the story that launched his political career and won him his first seat in Parliament.

What was it really like to watch Churchill win Dundee for the Liberals in 1910? A contemporary reporter, Luigi Barzini, Sr., brings the rollicking scene to life.

In 1911, a time of great political division, Churchill and F.E. Smith founded The Other Club, a collegial dining group for members of both parties. It's still going strong.

Churchill’s capacious memory was well stocked with phrases he first heard from Bourke Cockran. “The earth is a generous mother” was the best known, but Churchill also recited his most basic beliefs in Cockran’s words.

Internationally networked and lethal, idea-driven and fanatical, the anarchists seemed to come and go across national borders, settling or moving on with near-impunity.

Winston Churchill filed a dispatch after the Battle of Omdurman, where the Dervish Army of 52,000 was obliterated. His account offers us an early insight into his appreciation for a valiant foe, and the magnanimity this noble spirit expressed throughout his life.

Winston Churchill was famed for his prescience, though of course he liked to emphasize the predictions which turned out to be right. “I always avoid prophesying beforehand,” he said in a Cairo press conference on 1 February 1943, “because it is much better policy to prophesy after the event has already taken place.”