The Boer War

The Boer War

by Winston S. Churchill (Author)

Synopsis

The first shots of the Boer War were fired at Kraaipan on 12 October 1899. Winston Churchill, though he had left his Regiment, the 4th Hussars, in the previous March, was eager as ever to be within the sound of guns and wasted no time in getting himself accredited to the Morning Post as war correspondent. He sailed from Southampton aboard the Dunottar Castle on 14 October and reached Cape Town on the 31st. For the next eight months he filed his copy regularly for the Morning Post and it is these dispatches which were later reprinted in book form as London to Ladysmith via Pretoria and Ian Hamilton's March. As both are comparatively short and as the one follows on from the other, they have since been published together under the title The Boer War. In both books Churchill adopts the personal approach and recounts his own experiences set against the background of the War rather than attempting to give a picture of the conflict as a whole. As he says himself, 'Sometimes it happens that these letters are devoted to describing small incidents, and often personal experience, in a degree of detail which, if the rest of the campaign were equally narrated, would expand the account to limits far beyond the industry of the writer or the patience of the reader.' What emerges is a vivid and dramatic picture of the conditions under which the war was fought and of the problems which confronted the long untried British Army when faced with the dogged and determined resistance of the Boers.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 432
Edition: New edition
Publisher: Pimlico
Published: 03 Oct 2002

ISBN 10: 0712601031
ISBN 13: 9780712601030
Book Overview: Winston Churchill's eye-witness account of the Boer War.

Media Reviews
We never think of Churchill as a reporter. That is our loss... His dispatches from the 1899-1902 Boer War in South Africa to the London Morning Post read...as well today as...90 years ago...They sizzle with energy and daring. Washington Times
Author Bio
Winston Churchill (1874-1965) was educated at Harrow and Sandhurst, and after several years in the army, became a newspaper correspondent and then an MP. After Chamberlain's defeat in May 1940, Churchill formed a coalition government and as Prime Minister led Britain through the Second World War. Defeated in the July 1945 election, he became Leader of the Opposition, and then became Prime Minister once more in 1951. In his last years he was often described as 'the greatest living Englishman'. He was knighted in 1953, and won the Nobel Prize for Literature the same year.