The Rest Is History - 241. Young Churchill: Prisoner and Fugitive

Episode Date: October 10, 2022

In the final instalment of our series on Young Churchill, learn how Churchill escaped a prisoner of war camp in the Boer War, becoming an imperialist hero. Discover how Churchill sought shelter in rat infested hideaways, escaped in the tight consignment of a train, plus how the simple activity of a hair appointment almost blew his cover... *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. Or, if you're listening on the Apple Podcasts app, you can subscribe within the app find myself a popular hero. I was received as if I had won a great victory.

The harbour was decorated with flags. Bands and crowds thronged the quays. The Admiral, the General, the Mayor pressed on board to grasp my hand. I was nearly torn to pieces by enthusiasm and kindness. Whirled along on the shoulders of the crowd, I was carried to the steps of the Town Hall, where nothing would content them but a speech, which, after a becoming reluctance, I was induced to deliver.

So that, Dominic, the third of three brilliant impressions of Winston Churchill. I think your impressions have now reached a kind of decadent phase, Tom. They're increasingly incomprehensible. Well, if you could make that out, what Churchill was saying was that he's arrived in Durban

and he's the hero of the hour. And so basically, Dominic, everything we've been talking about, his great ambitions, his desire to cut a dash as an international hero has come true. And this is against into the details of why, what it is that Churchill does, the dramatic adventure he has that becomes a topic of obsessive international interest over the course of this episode. But I guess, first of all, we should do two things, shouldn't we? First of all, we should look at where Churchill is situated in terms of his career once he's

come back from the Sudan. And then we should look at the framework that leads Britain to go to war in South Africa against the wars. Two quite complicated things. So Churchill, for those of you who listened to the first two episodes, born in 1874, aristocratic stroke American stock. We talked about his sort of miserable parentage, the miserable parenting of Randolph and Jenny, his father and mother. He's gone to Harrow. He's gone to Sandhurst.

He's had these adventures in Cuba and in India. And then, of course, in the Sudan with the preface to a greater story, which would be his entrance into the political arena to sort of vindicate the memory of his Tory Democrat father, Lord Randolph. And when he comes back from the Sudan, he's already written a book about his adventures in the Northwest Frontier. He writes another book called The River War, which is quite a success about sort of his adventures with Kitchener's army going all the way to Khartoum. And using that sort of fame, he fights his first election in Oldham. He's approached by the Conservatives in Oldham. So Oldham, for those people, particularly non-British listeners, it was a constituency in Lancashire that sent two MPs to Parliament. It's a kind of cotton town,

very working class town. So Churchill was displeased to find that there was no hotel. So it's sort of not really an obvious place. Conservative territory. No, but in those days, I mean, people would often represent constituencies with which they had nothing, but they wouldn't even make the pretense as they do now that they deep down love the constituency. But a town full of mill workers isn't obvious.

I mean, it's not an obvious congruence with the grandson of the Duke of Marlborough. No, no, you're absolutely right. And in fact, a funny thing happens when he fights this election in July 1899. So it's a by-election. So as I said, there are two seats. So there are two radical liberals, Arthur Emmett and Walter Runciman, the father of the great historian Sir Stephen Runciman.

You're the Crusades historian, Tom. You must have read Stephen Runciman. But the Tories put up Churchill and they put up a man called mr maudsley mr maudsley is the secretary of the operative spinners association so he's an absolutely sort of died in the world working class tory he's a great sort of he calls himself the champion of tory socialism he says both parties churchill writes in my early life he says mr mauds. He says both parties, Churchill writes in My Early Life, he says, Mr. Morsley said that both parties were hypocritical, but the liberals were worse. He was proud to stand up on the platform with a scion of the ancient British aristocracy in the cause of the working people who knew him so well. And they actually sort of campaign under

the label, the scion and the socialist. That's great. There's something for the Tories to keep the red wall well exactly it is very kind of red wall politics isn't it and um uh gives you a sense of how ed war sort of lay victorian edwardian politics how different it was in many ways from you know what we assume the the constellation will be anyway um they lost they didn't lose by very much churchill lost by i mean only a what 1200 votes or something um everybody blamed him but he wasn't uh he wasn't disgraced he wasn't you know he wasn't humiliated it was clear that he would he was well placed to have another go i told him um in his biography and biography, Andrew Roberts says of this moment, Churchill always had good luck.

You know, great politicians are often sort of favoured by fortune. Had Churchill won in Oldham, as he could have done, he would have been in the House of Commons at the time of the outbreak of the Boer War. And had that happened, he would not have been able to make this extraordinary name for himself, which he does when the war in South Africa does break out at the end of the year. We should talk about the war in South Africa, the Burr War. It's actually the second Burr War, isn't it? But the roots of the war go back quite a long way because the Cape has been settled by mostly people from the Netherlands, the Dutch Republic, but not exclusively. And they take on the name of Boers, farmers.

Then the British arrive. They establish a colony at Cape Town, and they start nannying the Boers as they see it, because the British are not in favour of the Boers. Let's call it an unwoke approach to race relations. Unwoke? That's one way of putting it. Yeah. the Boers, let's call it unwoke approach to race relations. Unwoke, that's one way of putting it. Yeah. So essentially the Boers are, well, I mean, these are the people who in due course will come up with the policy of apartheid.

And they're fed up with what they see as British finger wagging. And so they pile into their wagons, the Boer trekkers, they call themselves, and they head off inland and they head off inland. And they establish three republics, don't they? What is it? Natal, Free State, and the Transvaal. Natal is British. Well, no, because in due course, the birds go inland. The British are content to see them go.

But then over the course of the decades that follow, for various strategic reasons to begin with. So that's why they take over Natal because that's on the coast and so they want to the eastern coast. So that's important for controlling the shipping lanes. But then in due course, what happens in the Transvaal is that in 1867, a guy finds what is called the Eureka Diamond. So it's the first huge diamond to be found in the Transvaal. And then four years later, more diamonds are found on the farm of a pair of brothers who are called Johannes Nikolaus and Diederik Arnoldus de Beer. And so the de Beers form a company. And this becomes, of course, the most famous diamond company in the world.

And you get all kinds of prospectors, mostly British, piling into the Transvaal. And that becomes even more so when gold is also discovered. And Paul Kruger, who is the leader of the Transvaal, says that this is a disaster, that this gold will cause the country to be soaked in blood. And these are very, very accurate words because basically the British are, you know, they want it. They want the diamonds and they want the gold. It's quite a complicated story, a fascinating story. So you have by the end of the 19th century, there had been, the Boers had fought a war against the British, the First Boer War, where they basically fought and they asserted their independence. And they won.

So this is, I think, not since the American War of Independence had Britain negotiated a treaty in the wake of such a defeat. Yeah, Majuba Hill. So the Boers had, by the end of the 19th century, the two Boer republics, the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. And there are two British, effectively British sort of colonies, the Cape Colony and Natal on the East Coast. And what has happened? So part of it is greed. Part of it is the fight for resources.

So as you said, there's been the diamonds, and there's the huge gold rush with the discovery of gold on the Rand around Johannesburg. And this huge pit settles town and this becomes Johannesburg. What are called the outlanders have kind of piled in. They're not given the vote because the Boers don't want to lose their monopoly of political power. So that becomes one of the great British pretexts,

that all these English speakers all these british subjects have piled into the transvaal in particular but they're not allowed to vote they are deprived of political rights and the british want to sort of they say they want to stand up for them obviously the british also want the gold and the diamonds they also want to eliminate the boer republics you know to sort of wipe away the stain of defeat in the first boer war they're also very interested in cecil rhodes's great project of the railway that will go from cairo to the cape so in other words they want a whole the map splashed within british imperial pink they want

a line that goes all the way from the mediterranean all the way down to the Cape Colony at the very bottom of South Africa. And the two Boer republics sit in the way of that. And they are determined to. And tension mounts and mounts and mounts. We should just mention the Jameson Rage, shouldn't we? Because a participant in that will feature in this story. Leander Starr Jameson. What a great name. Yes.

So that's the latter days of 1895, the first days of 1896. It's launched from Rhodesia, so what's now Zimbabwe. And it's an attempt to kind of rouse the British in Transvaal. And it's a dismal failure. It is a failure. And it's pretty clear that Jameson, who was operating as kind of freebooter, had been put up to it, or at least was doing it with the complicity of the big man in British politics, who is the colonial secretary, Joseph Chamberlain, great former mayor of Birmingham. Very much the political titan of the age, arguably even more so than the prime minister, Lord Salisbury. And one of the two or three political characters who had, I think, most influence on Churchill, who Churchill most looked up to. So Churchill is, as you can tell, when you read My Early Life, he's obsessed with Joseph Chamberlain, father of Neville. And he sees him as the great sort of political colossus of the age. Chamberlain is the imperialist

par excellence. He wants to wipe the burrs basically off the map of south of africa and complete the task of the sort of scramble for africa and giving britain this sort of huge swathe of of pink so generally britain's engagement in africa has been a fusion of of land grab and moralism it's been about establishing themselves as the kind of primary imperial power, but also authentically interested in getting rid of the slave trade, all that kind of thing. And there's kind of trace elements of that moralizing in the campaign to ensure that British subjects in Transvaal have the vote and also that the oppression of Africans in Transvaal is kind of,

not exactly completely stopped, but moderated, let's say. But that is pretty thin gruel, I think, by this point. I think essentially this is a fairly naked land grab, wouldn't you say? I mean, you were harrumphing a little bit at my casting of this as an inglorious episode. No, you said it was bad behavior. I think it is bad behavior. I think it's just ruthless behavior, Tom.

I mean, it's not like they're sniffing out a kind of indigenous kingdom. I mean, this is a different set, a rival settler. Well, no. So it's Europeans. And that's what, for people back in Britain, is all part of the fun, isn't it? They've had their crack against the Mahdi and his army. And that was easy.

But now it's kind of like going you know champions league or something this is an opportunity through to the next round um and they assume that they're going to go all the way but i you say it's it's kind of ruthless behavior of course it's absolute ruthless behavior but i do think that in general the british had sugar-coated their ruthlessness in africa with an authentic moralizing sense of mission which isn't there in the burr war which is not there in the burr war and that is why it's a hugely unpopular war with the rest of world opinion i mean this is world opinion definitely although it's the british try to use it as a way of sort of cementing um imperial brotherhood so there are troops from you know australia and so on there are all kinds of recruitment things in Canada.

But in America, in continental Europe, it's seen, I think, as what it is, which is bullying. It is perceived as bullying. There's this kind of faint hint of Putin, I think, about what happens. That's very harsh. The British start to mass troops along the border of the Transvaal. It's the Boers who actually declare war. The Boers issue an ultimatum. Yes, they do.

They do. And the British ignore it. And so war breaks out. So Kruger, the leader of the Boers, Paul Kruger, he moves first. He thinks he can forestall the British. The atmosphere gradually but steadily became tense, charged with electricity, laden with the presage of storm. Golly, did he say it just like that, Tom? Pretty much, yeah.

Golly, well. So Churchill, of course, is delighted. This is another opportunity for him to go on one of his great adventures. He actually writes in his autobiography, I must confess that in the ardour of youth, I was much relieved to learn that the war would not be entirely one sided or Peter out in a mere parade or demonstration. I thought it very sporting of the birds to take on the whole British empire.

And I felt glad that they were not defenseless and put themselves in the wrong by making preparations. So he's, you know, he very much takes the sort of champions league attitude to it. It's another match. Yeah. He's desperate to be in on it. Go for gold.

He gets it yet again, another lucrative newspaper deal, this time with a morning post. It's a record at this point for a war correspondent. They agree to pay him £1,000 for four months. To put that in context, we mentioned this actually in the first episode, that Conan Doyle is out there. Rudyard Kipling is out there. Edgar Wallace, who writes the original story that gives rise to king kong is out there so a lot of very eminent writers are going out but churchill is the best

paid of the lot and i think the reason for that isn't just that he is um a very good writer but it's also his reputation for going to you know the, the heart of danger. Yeah. Everyone knows he'll get into trouble. Everyone knows that he'll get scoops. Yeah. So he goes off. He sets sail three days after war is declared. He takes with him six cases of claret, champagne, and spirits.

So he's absolutely well prepared. He's very seasick, isn't he? He is seasick. One of the people on the boat is from the Guardian, the Manchester Guardian. And he writes a lovely, I think it's one of the best descriptions of the young Churchill. So he describes him as this sort of jolly fellow kind of going around the deck. And he says, I had not before encountered this sort of ambition, unabashed, frankly, egotistical, communicating his excitement and extorting sympathy. It was not that he was without the faculty of self-criticism.

He could laugh at his dreams of glory and he had an impish fun. I think that's very much. Yeah, I'm sorry. He's ambitious, he's bumptious. He's aware of his own comic side and he often likes to play up to that. I think it's one of the things that makes him endearing. But he's on the boat, isn't he, with Redvers Buller, who is the splendidly named commander, the man who's been appointed to lead the British forces. And essentially, he's need to wear khaki, although lots of people are very distressed about this. But there is a sense that the British army is a ponderous bull that is just waiting to be outsmarted by the far more agile and mobile Burr farmers.

And so it proves. Because even though Britain is the world's foremost imperial power, Britain is not a great army country. I mean, we relied so much on the Navy. And when the army had fought, with the exception of Crimea, since the Battle of Waterloo, the army has tended to fight technologically greatly inferior and more disorganized kind of indigenous peoples. So they're not really very good actually at fighting land battles. And the birds actually have better weaponry, don't they?

They've got better rifles. Basically, it seems to the British they're cheating. They don't kind of march out in slow, ponderous red lines. They hide behind rocks with their mouses, which can shoot faster and at greater distance than the British Lee Enfields. And they're also very, very proficient on horseback and churchill actually claims that they're the most capable mounted warriors since the mongols

and essentially since the mongols say by the time that redvers bulla with churchill arrives in cape town it the war has already gone disastrously wrong for the british because yes the birds have gone on the offensive they haven't just kind of hunkered down in the transvaal they've've kind of moved out. And they march out from Transvaal. They march out from the Orange Free State. And there is a rail line that links Johannesburg to Durban, which is on the the Transvaal, so within British controlled territory. And the Boers are able, you know, they inflict so many defeats on the British arms that they're in a position to invest it and lay it under siege. And that is basically the situation when Churchill arrives. And it's all about getting to Ladysmith for Churchill. So should we take a break here, Tom, and reconvene to find out what happens to Churchill? And let me tell you,

at first it's not good, so we'll come back after the break to see what it is. Bye-bye, drama. Bye. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman, and together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip,

and on our Q&A we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We just launched our members club if you want ad-free listening bonus episodes and early access to live tickets head to the rest of the entertainment.com that's the rest is entertainment.com Welcome back to The Rest Is History. We are in the town of Estcourt in Natal, in what is now South Africa. And Winston Churchill has gone out there. He's at the railway station with a small British force who know that somewhere out there in the sort of the scrublands beyond the Burrs, but they don't know exactly where they are

and tom wednesday the 15th of november 1899 the commander of the garrison at escort decides that he's going to send an armored train out on patrol and uh churchill hears about this and he's very keen to go isn't he well because he wants to get to lady smith so escort is just down the line from uh from lady smith and so is just down the line from uh from lady smith and so the wheeze is that you you send an armored train up the up the railways and this hopefully would from churchill's point of view would take him close enough to lady smith that he could then hop off sneak through the burr lines and get into lady smith and write exclusives and it will be great hurrah however there is a problem when you're up against very mobile very agile

troops who are very very adept at hiding behind rocks sending in a very slow and ponderous train perhaps isn't the best policy because essentially you're making yourself an absolute sitting duck for an ambush and that is exactly what happens yes so they travel 14 i mean this is an absolute turning point in churchill's life because it's the moment more than anything else that makes them famous. So funnily enough, if you said to people at any point up to the first world war and arguably in the years after the first world war, what is Winston Churchill famous for?

It would be the episode with the train and then what happens next. So they steam for 14 miles North to towards a place called Cheveley. And they actually spot what looked like burr gorillas sort of on the horizon. And Churchill, I mean, he muddies this a bit actually in his own account. But other people basically say Churchill is very gung-ho. And he says, oh, we don't really need to worry about that. It'll be absolutely fine. Because he's there.

He's both a war correspondent. But, of course, there's a slight element of him being a competent as well because you know he's he's armed yeah he's he's got exactly he's got the history uh anyway they run on then suddenly i mean there's an absolutely fantastic swashbuckling kind of dramatic account in my early life churchill's um autobiography there are suddenly these bright flashes of light, a huge white ball of smoke sprang into being and tore out in a cone above my head and shrapnel flying everywhere. There's a gigantic crash from the front of the train and all kinds of explosions and a shock. And then they're all sort of pitched head over heels onto the floor. And basically what has happened is

the Boers have derailed the train. They put rocks on the line. They've laid a trap for the British. They've derailed the train. And now they are pumping shells and bullets into the kind of crashed hulk of the train while Churchill and his comrades are sort of staggering to their feet and trying to get cover. So it's an incredibly dramatic kind of Hollywood-ish scene. And actually, Churchill then behaves with tremendous sort of courage and gallantry. So he

kind of rallies the survivors. They try to get some of the trucks off the line. The commander has survived, hasn't he? And he's a chap called Haldane, Captain... Yes. What's his name? Aylmer? Is he Aylmer? I can't remember. Aylmer Haldane, I think it is. Something like that. Yes. Aylmer, is he? Aylmer? I can't remember. Aylmer Haldane, I think it is. Something like that. Yes. So he's there with his troops. But Churchill's courage in this is really spectacular because he kind of rushes forward and he takes command of the effort

to try and get the train back on the tracks, doesn't he? Get the rocks off, get the train back on the track so it can then steam off. And the bullets are kind of firing. Pinging. Pinging all the time. I mean, it's very much like from Cuba onwards, this has been Churchill's story, that he puts himself in the thick of the action he's completely

he has this extraordinary gift of not losing his composer under fire so suppose his head well people later on say that he was he was sort of walking around blithely saying keep cool men and sometimes he actually has the effrontery to say, this will be interesting for the paper, which must be absolutely enraging to hear if you're one of the British soldiers terrified of being hit. But he does all this. He gets the engine driver, and the engine driver, who is a civilian, he's been hit by shrapnel,

so there's blood pouring from his face. And Churchill says, how do you fancy restarting the train and driving on through all this? And the train driver basically says, not bloody likely. You know, this is the last thing I want to do. And Churchill says to him, do you not know that it's statistically impossible for somebody to be hit twice on the same day? So if you've been hit once, you're absolutely fine.

There's no danger. If you've been wounded and you behave a gallantry, you'll definitely get a medal. And I will make sure you get a medal and you'll never get this chance again in your life. And amazingly, the engine driver succumbs to Churchill's entreaties and basically wipes off the blood and climbs back into his cab and obeys his orders to try and restart the train.

And actually, to his credit, Churchill, many years later, when he was Home Secretary, he tracked down the train driver and made sure that he was awarded the Albert Medal, the highest reward for gallantry for civilians. That was more than a decade later. So that's a story that reflects well

on everybody, I think. So the train goes off, doesn't it? But Churchill gets captured, basically because he's left his gun behind. So he has no choice. Well, there's a lot of the men have been left they can't all go off when the engine escapes so a lot of them left behind churchill's one of them uh as you said he's he had his he's he's left his gun so he's cornered by a horseman um and very reluctantly he eventually waves his handkerchief like all the others do. And they're taken prisoner by the Boers. But it's lucky that he, I mean, at one level, it's very unlucky that he didn't have his gun because otherwise he could have shot his way out.

But in the other way, it's very lucky because if he'd had his gun with him when he was captured, his claim to be an innocent journalist would have put him in real danger, I think. It would because he would then have been a spy. Yeah. See, because he's, as it is, he can claim to be, as you said, a war correspondent. He, as soon as they're captured,

he says to the Boers, I'm a war correspondent. You have to let me go. You know, under the laws of war, you're not allowed to take me a prisoner. And one of them supposedly says to him, uh,

we don't catch the son of, they know they recognize his name. And one of them says to him, we don't catch the son of a Lord every day. Well, not just any Lord because Randolph Churchill had been notoriously rude about the burrs had he yeah so there's a real a real grudge there so they're they're delighted to have lord randolph churchill son in their hands absolute determined not to lose him and so they they um they they put him

and everybody else on a train uh lock him up can't get off and they arrive in pretoria and uh there there is a teacher training college that's been built three years earlier called the stutz model school and there they are there they're in prison yeah and churchill says that when they arrived that it was like a new boy at a private school he he unbelievably does things like when he's in prison he tries to have a suit made and he has a man come in to cut it. Yeah, tweed suit. He has the local barber come in to cut his hair. You know, it's a sort of cross between a prison, a boarding school,

and a hotel, it seems to me. Which fits well on the burs, because... They're very well treated. Churchill's very gallant about this. They can receive visitors, they can buy newspapers, all kinds of things. Churchill's able to cash cheques. But the security is very gallant about this. They can receive visitors, they can buy newspapers, all kinds of things. Yeah. Churchill's able to cash checks. But the security is very tight, which is a frustration to Churchill because he is desperate to escape.

And I think he's desperate to escape, not just because he knows that it would be a dramatic adventure that would be good for the newspaper, good for his career, but also because he discovers that he has an absolute horror of being confined. And that makes sense, doesn't it? Because he's a guy who treats the entire British Empire as a stage for his adventures. So to be hemmed in like that is both humiliating and I guess very claustrophobic. Yeah, I think that's true. I mean, they arrive in Pretoria on the 18th of November. And for three weeks, he sort of paces around chafing. And he's always talking about it. I mean, they're always concocting schemes, him and the other officers.

Could they somehow take over the prison? What could they do? So it won't surprise anyone who knows about Churchill's enthusiasm for mad wheezes in the Second World War that his schemes are always incredibly complicated um kind of baroque um but there are there are two others there so um elma halden who we mentioned who was um in charge of the troops on the train and then a guy called adam brocky who is irish a sergeant major but had lived in south africa for most of his life and had taken part in the Jameson raid.

So if that had come out, he would have been in real trouble. So that's why he's with the officers. He pretends to a rank. So he claims to be a lieutenant that he didn't actually have. Otherwise he wouldn't be in the- Right. Because the officers and men were in prison separately. Yeah. So it's quite important for him to get out before yeah his captors realize who exactly he is and they essentially fashion a scheme that is a lot less complicated than churchill's which basically involves just jumping over a fence yeah because there's a toilet block basically yeah that there's a particular they watch the centuries there's a particular moment where the centuries have walked past the toilet block and if they they turn and they often turn and they start they're having a smoke and they're chatting

the centuries and just for a few moments they have their backs turned and they can't see what's going on and you could then climb onto the toilet block climb over the fence and drop down the other side and the other side this is in sort of suburban Pretoria. So it's just somebody's villa, the other side, the garden. And it's the night of the 12th of December, isn't it? To what Churchill has sort of been badgering the others and saying, let's do it, let's do it. And Churchill being Churchill, he goes first. So he waits for the centurion to chat.

And then he, I mean, his rendition of the story is, of course, very melodramatic. It was now or never. I stood on a ledge, seized the top of the story is, of course, very melodramatic. It was now or never. I stood on a ledge, seized the top of the wall with my hands and drew myself up. Twice I let myself down again in sickly hesitation. And then with a third resolve, I scrambled up and over. And all this kind of thing.

So he's over. And he looks back and he sees the sentries and they're still smoking and they haven't noticed. And then he just, he waits. He waits for the two other bugs time goes by and they just never join him they never come and they basically their moment has never come they don't get the chance and this is a real problem because they've got the provisions and brocky speaks dutch yeah churchill doesn't speak dutch africans so churchill i think has four bars of chocolate in his pocket and that's it and he doesn't speak a word of africans

so and he's got his nice brown suit on he's probably quite probably quite hot so what should he do so obviously being churchill he decides well he'll he'll carry on anyway did you see the note he left he left a note on his bed for the prison governor that said um i've decided to escape from your custody so attempts yeah and he's very he's very complimentary isn't he about um he says you know you've looked after me royally and when i get out i'm escaping now i will tell everybody how well you've behaved and he does actually let's meet up and have a good chinwag about it and you yes but you know it's he is now this is highly dangerous for him because he is their most prized prisoner and by escaping he has essentially made himself liable for a death sentence so i mean this is an incredible scene

it's such a hollywood melodrama and so what he has to do he has to what's brought about 250 miles to the um the coast of what's now mozambique mozambique so portuguese east africa so he has to cross about 200 miles of the transvaal without a map without the local any of the local languages no provisions no compass absolutely nothing but he assumes i'm Churchill, I will do it. And so he heads off. It's unbelievable. So he walks through the garden, this filler, with his hands in his pockets whistling, walks down the street, and there are people who pass him.

But he's in his sort of civilian brown suit, so nobody really takes a second glance. And he just keeps going. And he's obviously, his mind is racing the whole time. Yeah, it's nearly 300 miles to the coast um and he thinks well the railway that's what i'll head for um this so he he heads for the railway he sees the station after about two hours and he hides in a ditch sort of just beyond the station i mean this is now you know, this is real kind of Ryder Haggard, John Buchan sort of behavior. He waits and waits and waits.

Night has fallen. He waits. The train goes by. It begins to gather speed. And at that moment, he leaps for the train. He grabs something. He's sort of dragged along for a moment. Then he manages to haul himself up.

And incredibly, he's managed to haul himself up. And incredibly, he's managed to haul himself onto this, the fifth truck along, I think from the engine, the goods train. And he climbs on, I mean, it's real,

you know, Harrison Ford. It's really amazing. And he hides among the coal sacks and he falls, he falls asleep. And then he wakes, um, it's still night,

but he realizes he's got to really get off the train before daybreak so i mean again he um he leaps off the train while it's moving and sort of he doesn't injure himself particularly for once it's still dark i was in the middle of a wide valley surrounded by low hills and carpeted with high grass drenched in dew he finds a pool and he has a drink dawn breaks he looks for the um the sun he's in the absolute middle of nowhere he knows nobody has no provisions his my sole companion he says was a gigantic vulture yes who manifested an extravagant interest in my condition and hideous and ominous gurglings from time to time but so meanwhile back in the prison he has done the kind of the classic

you know he's he's put pillows um into his bed to make it look as though he's still there and so an orderly comes in leaves his mug of tea goes back out again and he'd probably been all right maybe for a day except that he'd forgotten that he'd ordered the barber to come in he'd forgotten to cancel it so the barber comes in prods the pillow realizes what's happened the alarm goes off and essentially the whole of transvol now starts to devote itself to the manhunt for churchill and they put out um things saying that he's he's escaped disguised as a woman they offer him yes very like Mr Toad and they make him sound like Mr Toad in the um the descriptions that they offer of him I suppose he does look a bit like Mr Toad he does yeah

so it's it's it's all looking very bad meanwhile Churchill is kind of weaving his way slowly eastwards but I mean no I mean it's a long long way and um he he's hoping to catch another train but as the night comes but he you know he waits and waits and waits and no trains come because they've you know they've worked this out so they've cancelled all the trains so what's he going to do now well he sees this eventually after a lot of trudging and um i mean he says actually tom you were talking in an earlier episode about Churchill and his faith. He says this is the one time in his life when he prays, when he's just desperate for something to turn up. And Churchill being Churchill.

It does, yeah. Because he sees what seems to be the opening of a mine. And he goes down and he just thinks, I have no choice but to try and brazen this out so he goes and knocks on the the one of the doors of the one of the houses by the mine by the mine opening and the bloke a voice says there is da and churchill says in english he says i'm a burger i've had an accident i was going to join my commando at kamati port i've fallen off the train we were skylarking i've been unconscious for hours. I think I may have dislocated my shoulder. And the man, who Churchill can't really make out, says, come in. So Churchill goes in. And the man is such a Hollywood scene. The man puts a gun down

on the table and says, I think I'd like to know a little more about this railway accident of yours. And then Churchill says, I think I'd better tell you the truth. And the man says, I think you had. And Churchill says, I am Winston Churchill, war correspondent of the Morning Post. I've escaped last night from Pretoria. I'm making my way to the frontier. I have plenty of money. Will you help me? And the man just looks at him with a gun between them on the table. And then the ultimate Hollywood moment, the man gets to his feet and holds out his hand and says, thank God you have come here. It's the only house for 20 miles where you would not have been handed over, but we're all British here and we will see you through.

So by just an incredible stroke of fortune, Churchill has found this man called Mr. John Howard, who's the manager of the Transvaal Collieries, who's been living in the Transvaal for years, but is British and obviously sympathises with the British. And Howard talks to all his men, and they're all pro-British as well. But there's a servant,

isn't there, who Howard doesn't trust. And so they decide he can't hide in the house. So there's nothing for it but to hide him down the mine shaft. And so they take him down this mine shaft along the, and there's a kind of side room and they just leave him there in, in the absolute dark on the assumption that there are candles that he can use.

One of the miners is from Oldham. Did you see this? So from the very constituency that Churchill, Mr. Dewsnap, who Churchill says locked my hand in a grip of crushing vigour. They'll all vote for you next time. So Churchill is down there in the mine.

And he's down there, but they've left him with candles and so they seem that he'll be able to light them. But he gropes around, he can't find them. And in due course, so he spends, what, a day, a night? No, it's three days. Three days, Tom. But he loses all track of time. And eventually they come down and say, you know, well, why don a day, a night? No, it's three days. Three days, Tom. But he loses all track of time.

Eventually, they come down and say, well, why didn't you light a candle? He said, well, there aren't any candles. They said, oh, the rats have eaten them. And he looks around, and he's felt the rats crawling all over him, sitting on him, nibbling at him, and they're all albino. So very, very sinister, Indiana Jones. But eventually, the mine manager comes up with a plan, doesn't he? He says there's a Dutchman nearby who they trust,

who's sending a load of wool to Mozambique, to what's now Maputo on the coast. And he's agreed that basically Churchill can hide inside the kind of consignment of water on the train. And that's exactly what happens. So Churchill, of course, he spends the time reading. He's got Robert Louis Stevenson's cutouts, full things with him. So he reads Kidnapped.

He says he finds it very thrilling. It awakens sensations with which I was only too familiar. So he went to the escape. He escaped on the 12th. He escaped on the 12th. So he's escaped for seven days. It's a week now. On the morning of the 19th, they load him, basically, onto

the train. The train is being loaded by the mine, and Churchill, they're going to give him the signal. He sneaks out of the mine. Nobody says anything. Nobody looks at him. He sneaks onto a truck and hides among the wool bales. And then darkness descends and off they go. And all day, all night, they travel eastward, the train, through the Transvaal.

They go through stations and he hears people talking and moving around him, but he doesn't dare move or obviously say anything. And then eventually they stop and then they're moving again. And he looks through a chink and he sees Portuguese words written on the signs and sees the uniform of the Portuguese officials. And he knows they've got through to what's now Mozambique. And then he kind of pushes his head out from underneath the truck and sings and shouts and fires his revolver in the air with joy because he's out.

He's free. He's out. He's escaped. And he goes to the British consulate, doesn't he, and gets put on a boat to Durban. And that's then the scene that we end this episode with. But it's such a British moment, Tom, when he goes to the British consulate. He presents himself at the British consulate.

And the person there says, the consul can't see you today. Come to his office at nine o'clock tomorrow if you want anything. And Churchill goes, loses his temper and says, you know, don't you know who I am?

And all this tells him the story. And then, of course, everybody's delighted to see him. And as you said, they put him on a boat to Durban. And when he arrives in Durban, by the time he arrives, he discovers that the war has been going even worse while he's been away.

And they've had what's called the Black Week of the British Army, when the British lost three battles in a row, at Stromberg, at Magus Fontaine, and at Colenso, the worst of all, where Redfus Buller had been defeated. 2,000, well, almost 3,000 men have been killed or wounded or captured. The war is going terribly. But his escape is the great news. You can absolutely see how the tabloid press of the day, as it were, sees on this story, this single act of intrepid heroism. And so when he gets off

at Durban, there are bands and crowds on the quays. There are people rushing to shake his hand. He gives a speech where he says they can't possibly lose in South Africa, and everybody's cheering and crying and waving and all of this thing. People shouting, God bless you. And with that, I suppose you could say, I mean, that crowns Churchill's early life, because this is the moment that he's long dreamed of. He is the hero of the empire, because he has redeemed Britain's honour at a time when the generals on the battlefield

have been busily engaged in losing it. Yeah. And he, I mean, astonishingly, he pulls his favourite trick, doesn't he, of going back. And he actually secures a commission. So he's simultaneously a war correspondent and back in the army. He says the next two months are the happiest of his life.

He's riding around, the Boers are finally on the run. And he actually ends up going to Pretoria, doesn't he? He does. He goes back into Pretoria in June 1900 with a South African light horse. And he has the pleasure of, as he would call it, liberating the very prison in which he himself had been held prisoner with his cousin, the Duke of Marlborough.

They go in. There's the prison. Churchill waves his hat in the air and cheers, and all the prisoners cheer. Yeah. They tear down the Boer flag. They raise the Union Jack. I mean, for somebody who had always thought his life was a romantic melodrama, I mean, these must have been transcendent moments, ecstatic moments.

Yeah. Because he's living the daydreams that he had had when he was a boy. He's a kind of, you know, hero of all jingo imperialists. But it has to be said that he is, he behaves very well, doesn't he? To the Boers, He sticks up for them. He salutes them as noble adversaries. And we've been talking about this throughout all these episodes, that although Churchill loves a good war and loves the kind of the pinging of bullets around him,

once the war is over, he likes to settle down, have a beer with the opponents, talk over the match, all that kind of thing. And that's basically his approach, that the birds should be treated as honourable adversaries. And this is where he comes up against his old enemy, General Kitchener, whose approach to the birds is not remotely of that order at all. Well, it's scorched earth. So from 1900, 1901, the war slightly changes.

The British begin to prevail on the battlefield. Kitchener, first Lord Roberts, and then Kitchener come in to conduct the war in a much more ruthless way. They end up herding the Boers, Boer civilians, into concentration camps so that they can basically starve out the guerrillas. And it then becomes an attritional, very bloody, sort of dirty campaign. And Churchill doesn't really like it. Your characterization, I completely agree with. So Churchill has this motto, in war, resolution, in defeat, defiance, in victory, magnanimity, in peace, goodwill.

And actually, it sounds like empty sort of political boilerplate, but he really believes it. So he's constantly writing in his dispatches for the Morning Post or in Telegram's home, we should treat the Dutch farmers with greater magnanimity. You know, they were sort of honourable opponents who we have defeated and now we should extend the hand of friendship, all this kind of thing. And that does mean that although he's a conservative,

although he then goes and fights an election back in Oldham, and this time, of course, he wins, and Mr. Dusnap from Oldham, his wife is in the gallery. There was general jubilation. Yes, at one of his public meetings. He mentions Mr. Dusnap's name and people say, his wife here his wife's here and everyone's absolutely delighted so he wins but even in in victory he's still making you know he's still saying we should you know we should treat the boers uh better we should reach a sort of honorable peace with them and so forth in fact in his very

maiden in his maiden speech um which is in the 15th of February 1901, so the war is still going on. In his maiden speech, he says the words, if I were a boar fighting in the field, and if I were a boar, I hope I should be fighting in the field. And there's a real sense of sort of discontent that ripples through the Tory benches. And Joseph Chamberlain, the colonial secretary who's sitting on the front bench, mutters, audibly mutters, that's the way to throw away seats. Because in other words, Churchill is not endorsing the kind of jingoistic mood that has sort of prevailed in British politics. So even at that stage, Churchill is a very semi-detached member of the Tory party. And and actually he doesn't last in

the Tory party very long so he's out within within a few years but of course but because of the Burr war and because of the Sudan and all of that kind of thing whatever kind of political vicissitudes affect him he's enshrined in the public mind people who aren't very interested in politics as the great imperial hero the kind of the character from a romantic melodrama. And that, I guess, is how he made his name. Well, an extraordinary story. And I think sets us up nicely to come back to look at the further developments in Churchill's career, which, of course, is a great blaze of colour

and controversy right the way up to 1940. So I hope you've enjoyed that. I guess really that's the second series of episodes we've done on a great imperial hero, isn't it? So we did General Gordon. General Gordon. I guess Churchill is not conventionally thought of in those terms because, of course, his record in the Second World War

dominates everything else but of course that level of achievement at such a young age the the range of places he'd been to the number of wars he'd fought the number of books he'd written the number of articles he'd composed an astonishing feat um and maybe even his father would have been proud of him. Who knows? He might as well. No, Lord Randolph, he probably wouldn't. But I agree with you. I think it is astonishing.

And I think it's one of those things, it's a bit like writing about Shakespeare or the Beatles or something, because they're so ubiquitous. You're itching to find some way to devalue them and to be revisionist and to therefore say something iconoclastic. But actually, the truth of it, with Churchill's early life, for those first sort of 30 years or so, is that it really is an unbelievably gripping and enjoyable story with this kind of impish, ridiculously overambitious, often very conceited, but enormously endearing and sort of self-mocking, self-mythologising character at the centre who it's impossible, I would say,

now maybe not all listeners will agree and that's fair enough, but I would say it's almost, I find it impossible to dislike. And actually the two imperial heroes, I mean, my God. You'd rather spend an evening with Churchill than Gordon, wouldn't you? Yeah, you'd rather spend, I mean, a lifetime with Churchill than an evening with Gordon, I would say. I think an evening with General Gordon would not be, you know, it's not an evening with Dame Edna or something, is it?

An evening with General Gordon. No. Well, anyway, I hope you enjoyed that. Our first Sally into Churchilliana. Great fun. Thank you very much, Dominic, for suggesting it. You're welcome. I hope you all enjoyed it, And we will be back very soon.

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