Millard tells the story of his capture during the early years of the Boer war, and his subsequent escape. There is little new information, but it is happily readable, and offers an independent voice.  Which in this case is critical, because until recently the best known writing on the subject came from a biased, exploitative, self-interested source, whose purpose was to enhance his own post-war political prospects.  Churchill himself, that is.  

 

Carlo d'Este's 2008 Warlord tells the story with detachment but less detail.  Millard's narrative is fresher, better focused on the personalities involved.  And despite Churchill's preoccupation with himself, and prominent people he met, there were quite a few who risked their lives to save his.  Millard notes in passing that Churchill "never again" saw either the English coal-miners who hid, fed, and protected him, or the railroad workers who ensured he regained his freedom by traveling with their help to the then-Portuguese East Africa.

 

An incidental point perhaps.  But surely a little discordant, in a tale usually described as "heroic"?  I knew Vietnam veterans who traveled thousands of miles to meet, and thank, helicopter crewmen who'd saved their lives.  We have all heard stories of veterans of both world wars making similar efforts to acknowledge their indebtedness to the courage of others.  Of course Churchill himself never claimed to be perfect, yet he is such a towering figure we may still be surprised that a "warts and all" portrait contains what looks like, yes, a wart.

 

Churchill moved his world, he set its path for years to come, he inspired and gave life to a bombed, near-beaten, people, making what without him might've been their worst, and last, moments into their best.  Millard's Hero of the Empire brings him to life, at the dawn of his astonishing public life, and she's a pleasure to read.