Churchill: Wanted Dead or Alive

In this biography of a dashing, brash young Churchill, Celia Sandys reconstructs her celebrated grandfather’s adventures as a correspondent and combatant during nine months of the Anglo-Boer War at the end of the last century—events that took him from the bivouacs and battle sites of Transvaal to his incarceration as a prisoner of war in Pretoria and ultimately to a bold escape across the border into Mozambique. Using both British and South African sources of testimony, which alternately reveal the dauntless Winston as a courageous ally or foolhardy foe, Sandys recounts the exploits of a Churchill whom history has largely forgotten. With narrative vigor, historical authority, and singular charm, she offers both a fully drawn portrait of the ready adventurer who would become England’s legendary prime minister and an illuminating chronicle of the turbulent events one hundred years ago that defined South Africa for modern times.