although he was still a very young man Churchill was no stranger to situations of great personal Peril he had already taken part in four Wars on three different continents and had come close to death in each one he had felt bullets whistling by his head in Cuba and saw his friends hacked to death in British India although he had tried again and again in war after War to win Glory
churcher had returned home every time without the medals that mattered no more distinguished or famous than he had been when he set out the bore War he believed was his best chance to change that to prove that he was not just the son of a famous man he was special even extraordinary and he was meant not just to fight for his country but one day to lead it although he believed this without question he still had to
convince everyone else the one scenario that Churchill had not envisioned was crossing enemy territory alone without companions or provisions of any kind he didn't have a weapon a map a compass or even any food he didn't speak the language beyond the Vagas of outlines he didn't even have a plan just the unshakable conviction that he was destined for greatness that was an excert from the book I'm going to talk
to you about today which is hero of the Empire the Bor War a daring escape and the making of Winston Churchill and it was written by Candice malard so about a year and a half ago I read one of my favorite biographies of Winston Churchill written by Paul Johnson it's only like 170 or 180 pages long I thought it was excellent It's episode 225 if you haven't listened to it but was fascinating is the cover of that
book made me think of something all the pictures in my mind and things that I've ever seen of Winston Church show we're like the Winston Church show that fought the Nazis and yet the cover of Paul Johnson's book has four different pictures two of them are of a young Winston Churchill so after that I realized hey I should really read I mean what's the subtitle the making of Winston Churchill so I'm always
fascinated by these biographies and I've read a couple of them where they cover like the first like you know 20 30 maybe 40 Years of somebody's life and so I ordered two books on that I could find on young Winston Churchill one is called a young Tycoon and I ordered the book that I'm holding in my hand I will leave both link below in case you want to get them but the reason I started I wanted to start with this one is because the
author of this book Candace Mard also wrote wrot uh my I've read a bunch of books on Teddy Roosevelt he'll appear in this book as well but my favorite book so far that I've read on Teddy Roosevelt is book called The River of doubt and Candace Mard uh was the was the author of that book as well so if I'm reading to understand what Winston church was like I might as well start with with the
author that I already love her work this book is only going to cover this is incredible it's incredible story this book's only going to cover the first 25 to 26 years of Winston Churchill's life and then and it ends there's a maximum that I repeat over and over again that became really obvious and really apparent the more you study History's Greatest Founders and that is belief comes before ability this book if you had to
summarize this book that that's how you would summarize it by the time Winston Church 24 he is utterly convinced that it is his Destiny to become Prime Minister of England and so let's jump into his personality and some of the things that were motivating him to make the decisions he made when he was a young man since his early childhood memory Churchill had been fascinated by War there is no ambition I cherish so
keenly he said as to gain a reputation for personal courage and the important part of or one of the important parts I should say of having this ambition for personal courage to being interested in war and then using like being a hero and becoming famous as a like an entry or Gateway into politics is he's doing this at the time when the British Empire is at his Apex or at Zenith at this point
it was the British Empire covered more than a fifth of the world's land surface the British Empire had come to rule about a quarter of the human race it was the largest empire ever known it was five times the size of the Roman Empire by the time church will reach adulthood the greatest threat to the Empire no longer came from other major Powers but from the ever expanding burden of ruling its own colony so we are going to be in
1899 and 1900 for most of this book now this is why Churchill took an early interest in this to Churchill such far-flung conflicts offered an irresistible opportunity for personal glory and advancement this book has a bunch of excerpts from letters that he wrote books that he wrote there's a lot of Correspondence between him and his mother and he tells her exactly what he wants he he wants a chance to prove
himself churcher was born into the highest ranks of British aristocracy and what what I respect about him is you know he could have lived a life of privilege and a life of leisure and very much like Teddy Roosevelt he desired to test himself and to live a full life and not just rest on The Laurels of the like his his family that came before him for a member of Churchill's high social
class such bold unabashed ambition was a novelty this is actually really important because it's going to come up over and over again he did not really act British or he did not act as he was supposed to act and so one thing that Churchill had from a very young age is this like I don't even know how to describe it like unbelievable Relentless self-belief almost like this God complex and usually with that you have an
indifference to the opinions of other people in regards to how you should behave or what you should be doing so it says in his open Pursuit Of Fame and popular favor Churchill seemed far less Victorian as he was expected act right then rooseveltian they mean Theodore Roosevelt there's going to be a lot of parallels between a young Theodore Roosevelt and a young uh Winston churo in fact there'll be a direct comparison
a little later on this is some of the complaints that other people he's like you're not being Victoria you're not acting like you're an aristocrat what are you doing Winston advertises himself as simply and as unconsciously as he G Churchill was widely criticized for being a self Advertiser and he did not care at all about this criticism he thought hey if I can actually seek Fame if I can win glory in these wars and I
can that's like the the way I'm going to break into Political life he says this explicitly he says distinction in turn could be parlayed into political clout the kind of public life that he longed for and which he believed was his Destiny for that he was willing to risk anything even his life and that's the important thing he was willing to risk his life on things that he believed believed in you know he they they said
like he could have stayed he could have spent his time playing Polo or fox hunting or anything else instead he goes to Cuba as a military Observer I think he's like 21 years old at the time and this is the first time that he gets up close with death he's actually there's a bullet that goes right over his head and Strikes and kills the horse that is standing next to him when he doesn't get
the glory that he wants in Cuba he's like okay well then I'll just go and fight in India and he'll use this is another thing or I guess two things one he never waits for an invitation and two he's completely fine pulling every single string and using every single relationship that he has to get what he wants Churchill had never had any qualms about pulling every string he had I am certainly not one of those who needs to
be prodded he said in fact if anything I am a prod and this is a great description of him at this time Churchill did not need encouragement he only needed a chance and so he goes to India to help the British fight the ptions now in his description of the enemy we see the traits that he admires in other people and then based on his actions this is what I mean I don't even know how to describe it
megalomania might be the way you describe it like his you'll see you you see what I'm talking about in a minute in his actions it just shows you the level of self-belief and this his complete belief that he's like destined for greatness he can't be killed because there's no way he's too important and fate wouldn't have him just have like this normal ending the descriptions of Churchill's like self-belief in the book
or my biggest takeaway from it because it just happens you know page after page after page so let me just get into this and and hopefully you'll see why just I I'm at a loss for words like it's incredible the way this guy thought about himself uh so he says the passions fought hand to hand and face to face they seemed terrifyingly heedless of their own safety or even survival then Churchill would you could his behavior
you could say the same thing about him they fought when they had no chance of winning when they were alone on the battlefield when they had been shot and speared and bayonetted careless of what injury they may receive churchil observed in awe they devote themselves to the destruction of their opponent and so this is what I mean about this like Megalo maniacal self-belief churro understood that he
could very easily be killed in the battle that lay before him but he did not for a moment believe that he would be I have faith in my star he said that I am intended to do something in the world in fact soon after arriving in India he had told a fellow officer that he expected to be prime minister one day and so he does something the note I left myself on this page is like I don't understand this this I don't understand
he he's not trying to blend in on the battlefield he literally wants to stand out so he gets this gray Pony and his entire point is to stand out to the enemy I this is crazy churo took great satisfaction and the knowledge that he would be impossible to miss I rode on my gray Pony all along the front of the line of the Skirmish line where everyone else was lying down in cover he would
later confess foolish perhaps but given an audience there is no act too daring or too Noble this mentality continues this is after the battle he winds up shooting this is the first time he's ever killed a person says he would never know how many men he killed that day before help came but even as he looked down on the mutilated bodies all around him the bodies of men he knew men very much like him he knew that he would not
share their fate he was meant to live of that he was certain more than that he was meant to do something great with his life I do not this is check out this quote I do not believe the gods would create so potent a being as myself for so prosaic and ending so I think I should actually pause and back up like why why am I doing so many this is the third podcast I've done on Churchill I think I've done two on
Napoleon I'm going to do a ton you know over the next few decades I hope I do 10 or 15 or 20 different episodes on both of these people and the reason is is because if you study the history of Entrepreneurship two people that are not like didn't start companies that are not typical like entrepreneurs are mentioned over and over again by History's Greatest entrepreneurs so if you're studying the history of uh history of
greatest Founders before World War II they all say the same thing they're motivated and inspired by Napoleon after World War II Napolean is still there but then they bring up Church show a lot and so I want to know why some of the people that built the world's most successful companies ever were inspired by people like Churchill and Napoleon and there's so many times where Churchill is talking
and writing and giving speeches where I'm like this just sounds like Napoleon and so this is the first time in the book where I got I'm reading this where he's like I don't believe the gods would create so potent being as myself for so prosaic an ending I have no idea why but when I read that line I thought of something I learned in the book The Mind of Napoleon that I did on episode 302 and Napoleon said if I have any ambition
it is so natural to me so innate so intimately linked with my existence that it is like the blood that circulates in my veins like the air that I breathe this innateness this self-belief is innate in Churchill he everything that happens to him he reads as an affirmation that he should believe what he believes about himself as sobering as Churchill had found the Carnage that he
had witnessed his faith in himself in the future had Not For a Moment been shaken on the contrary he was acutely aware of the fact that the the men all around him were killed and and he emerged not just alive but whole nothing touched me he wrote I destroyed those who molested me and so ped without any disturbance of body or mind but just because he has his level of self-belief doesn't mean he's always right he
thought he could leave the Army right he's like okay I think I've done enough I'm going I want to run his whole goal is like get glory in war and then parlay that into public office right then get elected to like a you know basic level and then eventually work my way up and become Prime Minister one day and so this is his first mistake where he does this he he leaves the Army he says I
shall not be a soldier he's going to run for elected office and lose I like how he describe this though he knew he could believe that he was destined to do this but it wasn't guaranteed it is not without some misgivings that I let go of my to rope he said and commit myself uned to the waves of life's oceans propelled only by my own Machinery he saying I will take the risk of not being a soldier anymore for my true goal I
want to be in public office I want to be prime minister one day this reminds me a lot when I got to the section of if you read any of Robert Carlo's books his multiple part biography on lynon uh Johnson so LBJ he had a plan to be president and it started with getting elected to congress if I'm remembering correctly he even turned down he even turned down the ability to run for the governor of Texas cuz's like that's not
my goal my goal is federal office my goal is the presidency I'll have a better chance of getting there going to Congress first and so he has a lucky turn of events for him unfortunately one of the representatives dies unexpectedly of pneumonia so that opens up the opportunity for Churchill to run but this is where his Relentless self-belief is going to be proven wrong temporarily so it says he was stricken down with
pneumonia pneumonia this was less than a month before the election Churchill was got himself on the ticket whether he was ready or not in his own mind of course he was more than ready there is no doubt he wrote that if anyone can win this seat I can and so as you can guess we know that he is going to lose his election because this entire book is about his time in the bore war and re specifically the fact that he becomes a
he becomes a cap he's a p he gets captured and then he has this daring successful Escape that makes him world famous what I did admire about his approach to running for office even at a young age though is just how much he would practice he he has this Relentless combination of practice and self-confidence obviously the public Praises people for what they practice in private church is known has give some of
the best speeches well this is how he actually did it for Churchill few things in life could compete with the thrill of climbing onto a stage stepping behind a Podium and commanding the attention of every man in the room as much as he loved public speaking it did not come naturally to him he overcame this problem with practice and perseverance that is his quote although he would become famous for his sharp wit
Churchill was also uncomfortable addressing an audience unless he had carefully written and exhaustively rehearsed every line of his speech Winston spent hours preparing for every formal lecture and even his brief remarks and would do so throughout his life a friend would later joke that Winston has spent the best years of his life life composing his impromptu speeches and then in typical Church of
fashion he he starts to get slightly good at something and he's like oh I'm going to be the best in the world best in the world at this it was clear to them that he had the potential to become a great one perhaps even the greatest and so even with the self-belief even with the practice it's not good enough he loses his first election he is 24 years old at this point and so other
politicians are making fun of him they say stuff like this I thought he was a young man of promise but it appears he's a young man of promises this searing assessment only hardened Churchill's resolve he had no money no occupation and it appeared no one who believed in him quite as much as he believed in himself the only thing he knew with any certainty was that in the end whatever it took he would succeed or quite
literally Die Trying there is a quote an image of a quote that I keep on my phone from this author Steve Rella who also makes podcasts and and shows on Netflix and he says you're off driven by the hatred of the version of yourself that would quit and so he goes away to recover to scheme to plot to figure out what his next move is now here's the crazy thing his family they have a family history that goes back like
hundreds of years his family had a palace you got to Google image search this thing this is incredible so his family's Palace is called Blenheim and this is where he's going to go Churchill had always believed that Blenheim it's history its Grandeur its power to all had molded him creating the foundation for the great man he was destined to become we shape our buildings he said and then our buildings shape us Blenheim
served as a painful reminder of his inability thus far to live up to it and so at this point the palace is like this entire dedication to somebody had lived 200 years before which is John Churchill who was believed to like be one of the greatest Generals in history and in fact uh Winston writes a later on Winston writes a biography of John Churchill and he said that he had one skill that made him indispensable he never lost on the
battlefield and it was because of all the wars that he had won that he actually gets this Palace it was given to him and uh so it says nearly 200 years later the weight of John Churchill's Legacy followed his ambitious young descendant wherever he went it's fascinating so it's sitting here thinking about what's taking place on these few pages what's going on in the mind of Winston Churchill at this
point in his life and essentially like he's being stretched to what is possible right and I think I don't have a family Palace you probably have a family Palace either but I think biographies of people who achieve great things actually stretch what you think is possible and if you think about it's kind of this weird closed loop because people that live lives so remarkable that somebody
wrote a book about them wrote a biography about them in their biography you realize that they're reading biographies too and so it just goes on and on and on and so as prone to happen to this point in history there's another uh war that Brit the British are fighting and so chur had already written like two two or three books at this point mostly about his time at War and so he winds up becoming the best paid
War correspondent in England and so he's going to go to South Africa for the bore war and his approach is remarkably consistent so it says when it came to taking advice Churchill was his mother's son he was definely determined to decide for himself where he would go and what he would do and so he starts writing about this the reason he wants to do this is one he's looking for Glory to
Parlay back into political power right but he also thinks that he's a gifted writer he says he had long had faith quote in my pen the success of his books had only strengthened his already substantial confidence Churchill was no hack and he knew it my literary talents do not exist in my imagination alone and so he has to go on this twoe trip on a boat to get from England to South Africa and he's struck by the arrogance and
overconfidence of the British Military Officers that are on the boat with him this is going there's a lot of uh similarities between what's taking place in 1899 and 1900 in South Africa coming from the British as we covered last week 40 years after this the British attitude and I guess opinion towards the Japanese uh that that took place you know 19 in the late 1930s early 1940s it's essentially the same thing it says some
of our best officers were on board Churchill wrote and they simply could not conceive how quot irregular amateur forces like the bores could make any impression against disciplined professional soldiers and so right away immediately in fact before Churchill's boat even gets there the bors I I would describe them as this they're perpetually prepared the Brit here's the problem the British are utterly
predictable the bores know the terrain they're knowledge of the game is going to give them an edge they're going to wind up killing one of the most famous British generals and just rolling over him even before Churchill gets there and so after I read through this section and I was making my notes I just I just wrote to myself I don't ever want anyone to be able to guess my next move and
it's eventually this turns around you know about a year from now but not after the loss of a ton of British supplies soldiers generals they just the borers just kick their ass whatever waves of panic the British army might have imagined the reality was starkly different the bores were not frantically preparing for war they weren't rushing together maps and Men supplies and ammunition they didn't have to there had
never been a time either in their own lives are in those of their forebears where they had not been ready to fight every bore man and boy between the ages of 16 and 60 and many much older and younger than that set out for war there was no need to enlist in the Army because there was no standing army and there was no need to find a uniform because there was no uniforms uniforms this is the boow perspective okay
uniforms are something Soldiers war and bores were fiercely adamant that they were not soldiers a term they found deeply offensive ensive they referred to themselves only as Citizens this is an example of how they were perpetually prepared the average bore man was accustomed to living off of just a handful of Staples coffee brown bread and dried meat they had been stockpiling weapons when it came to Marksmanship it
was impossible to compete with the bores they were used to hunting Lions their lives depended every day on the speed and accuracy of their shooting they were the finest mass of rifle armed Horseman ever seen churel wrote and the most capable mounted Warriors since the Mongols they were also determined to win they felt that they had no other choice they believed that this land was their
Birthright and a gift from God so a boy growing up in their culture learned how to shoot a rifle as soon as he was strong enough to hold one everybody in their culture had spent the great majority of their lives at war in one form or another and so it wasn't just the British generals that were on the boat with Churchill that thought like these Guys these are like little Farmers we're the greatest Empire we're going to
roll right through them in fact this is the death of this guy named pen Simmons so pen Simmons is a famous General when Churchill is getting close to South Africa another boat pulls up and writes out like the big a big sign telling them that Penn Simmons was killed and the people that were on the boat with Churchill the Arrogant generals and people in the military couldn't believe it and he was killed because of British
overconfidence that's what gets them killed this is just like their attitude 40 years later against the Japanese episode 318 if you haven't listened to last week's episode pen Simmons continued to insist that there was no cause for concern he scoffed that no bore Commando would dare attack a British Brigade I feel perfectly safe he said and so the next day at 5: in the morning they get attacked and his
arrogance is not just in words it's in actions as well so they're getting attacked they don't know the terrain they don't know how many people it's it's raining too they didn't know how many people are attacking them they were completely unprepared and he does some weird things where he decides he he refuses to make himself blend in in fact he goes out of his way to make sure that the enemy knows who he is he insists
that his Aid to Camp ride by his side holding a dashing Scarlet pennant and so if you're the army fighting this guy and you have their leader saying waving like a giant red flag here I am what do you think is going to happen to him he winds up uh getting into a fight he says he had been shot in the stomach and he said I am severely mortally wounded the General on the other side and they
wouldn't even call him a general it's this guy named Batha sending somebody like Penn Simmons in pursuit of somebody like Batha in this land and terrain is like sending a cow in pursuit of a rabbit Batha knew the region well he had been born nearby and had grown up hering cattle over hundreds of miles of its scrubby grassland the British on the other hand knew almost nothing about this place are its surroundings and had
no idea what tactical opportunities or dangers it held so not not only are the British utterly predictable and not only do they not know the terrain but they're also excessively slow this reminds me of something that I learned from reading about Ernest Shackleton I'll get to in a minute in comparison to the astonishing mobile bors who were able to wage war with little more than men horses and
guns and to move from Battlefield to Battlefield at a moment's notice the British army moved at a glacial Pace way down by the sheer number of its possessions and it goes into detail of all the weird things kind of like creature Comforts uh that they carry into battle into war it's just very bizarre behavior and if you've ever read the the famous book endurance uh which is the story of Erna Shackleton there's
a line in there it's one of my favorite ideas that I've ever come across in any book that I've read and it says from studying the outcomes of past Expeditions he believed that those who burden themselves with equipment to meet every contingency had fared much worse than those that had sacrificed total preparedness for Speed that a description of the bores they had sacrificed total preparedness for Speed
and we see another bizarre choice this is again just like the British in Singapore where they'd make they're in the tropics it's 100 degrees it's humid it's disgusting out and they're making them wear these wool caps and these uh costumes H costumes these uniforms that are made for much colder climates they refuse to adapt to the actual environment that they're operating in so it says to the bors however even the
khaki uniform seemed elaborate if not ridiculous British offic officers wore High peaked pitch helmets that shaded their eyes from the Sun but were hot and uncomfortable and made easy targets for bore Sharpshooters it's remarkable how so much of human nature repeats and you just see this over and over again so now we get to the point where I mentioned earlier that Churchill didn't act
British that he was he acted rosev velan so there's a bunch of other War correspondents that are going to be stationed in and around Churchill and one of these guys had spending a lot of time at Churchill and he's like man this is this is another Teddy Roosevelt Atkins had been with Teddy Roosevelt in Cuba so it says Atkins found Churchill not just amusing but fascinating he had seen his like only once before in Cuba
during the Spanish American war Atkins who was used to the almost extreme discretion and modesty of British military man was startled by Roosevelt's blatant self-promotion but he didn't hold it against him in fact he found it honestly refreshing nor did Atkins believe that Churchill was simply boasting when he reeled off his accomplishments and outlined his audition ious plants he thought that
Churchill like Roosevelt was probably just telling the truth and Churchill like Roosevelt was willing to put himself In Harm's Way to take a risk to get what he wanted so he's talking about he's like I got to get to the front you can't be a war war correspondent and he he says he's a war correspondent but he's he's armed he's going to wind up playing a decisive role in a battle and and trying to like save a bunch of
people so's like this quasi like almost like a soldier SL reporter but what he realizes like the rest of these War correspondents not the rest of them but some of them are scared they don't want to get to the front and so he feels taking this risk gets him ahead of the vast majority of people that refuse to do so this is a quote from Churchill a man should get to the front at all costs for every 50 men who will Express a
desire to go on service there's only about one who really means business and he will take the trouble and run the risk of going to the front so there's a bunch of examples of the difference in the way the the British approach War and the way that the bors approach it to the British war was like this Grand Adventure and you can kind of see it with some of the weird decisions they make on the battlefield to the bores it was a trade
and so it says for the bores war was not an exciting Adventure but the cold cruel inescapable business of Life the boore went out in a business-like way to kill men as he would to kill dangerous wild beasts and he saw no more glory in dying at an enemy's hand than in being eaten by a lion and so the bores do everything possible to try to win so if you're having a shootout with somebody you're
going to take cover behind rocks or whatever you can right the British wouldn't at the very beginning eventually they're like oh uh they're first of all the the Boors can they're they're way more accurate so they can you know they hunt lions they're used to hitting targets from Far distances and so they wind up killing a bunch of British soldiers and this is the British response they were beginning to see the
advantages of blending into their surroundings being quiet quick and even ducking we are learning lessons every day from the boar we we are getting to know his game and learning to play it ourselves nothing but being shot at will ever teach men the art of using cover Now that statement the art of using cover so the way Churchill is going to get caught they are using the British are moving the railways to move supplies
and troops and everything else right they have these things called the British armored train it is the most misnamed thing I've ever heard in my life so picture a shipping container with the top cut off and so because the British are so predictable the boor set a trap they know EX actly what they'll do so they cause this train that church was on to retreat they had put a bunch
of rocks around this corner so they knew once the train hits it the Train's going to De derail all of these British soldiers are going to Tumble out of this ridiculous non-armored armored train and they can just pick him off as they please and so that's exactly what happens Churchill is actually incredibly Brave there's all these eyewitnesses about what he did he's going to wind up Surviving he winds up helping other
people survive too and this is where he gets captured but this is actually this this is what was said about church says Winston is like a strong wire that stretched always Springs back he prospers under attack and disparagement he lives on excitement the more he has to fight for the greater the obstacle the greater the Triumph and so he's taken prisoner they're forced to march to where they're going to hold all the
prisoners in this like makeshift prison what was interesting though is one he he flips out immediately because he just can't accept the fact that he's forced to submit to obey and to ad door to another person right but he's also shocked at the civility it says he was struck by the civility of the men meaning the people that were had taken him cap captive the Bor if you listened to last week essentially Churchill is in
the exact opposite environment that the Forgotten Highlanders that the Gordon Highlanders were in and so even on this March they were being civil to him they said you need not walk fast one of them said in perfect English take your time when churro lost his hat another boar had tossed him his own and this level of compassion came straight from the top of the person running the bore Army at the
time when they kill Penn Simmons what I mentioned earlier the leader of the bore Army this guy named Joe Burr had actually sent pen Simmons Widow a letter of sympathy then he demands that the bores treat wounded British as they would treat their own men and in many cases they were even more compassionate to the British than they were to their own men they gave the wounded the blankets off their own Saddles and slept
themselves on the naked velt so the word velt is is actually used over and over again I had to look it up it's actually an uncultivated country or grassland in southern Africa but I could not fathom the treatment of these British PS after what we went through last week listen to this the bors allowed their prisoners almost unheard of latitude they were permitted to receive visitors to buy
newspapers and to be waited on by their Soldier servants so some people like Churchill they actually went to war with like a manservant the prisoners could buy almost anything they could afford from cigarettes to bottled beer to even clothing bedding towels and even a new suit and yet is through this imprisonment right Churchill's personality is revealed to us through this imprisonment this is like the Four
Seasons compared to the stuff that was going on with Alistar art in in Singapore and Japan last week although Churchill acknowledged that he was the least unfortunate kind of prisoner to be he had hated his captivity with an intensity that surprised even him he could not bear the thought of being in another man's control and so immediately he goes starts going crazy he can't focus he's miserable Church would allow
nothing to distract him from his one overriding allc consuming goal escape and so he starts hatching all these different plans and then especially at this age he may have been this his whole life but he has a giant mouth he just can't shut up and so he tells people what he's going to do he's still around other Military Officers that outrank him so they can tell him hey you can't do this when some of the senior officers
found out about his wildly ambitious plan they quickly put an end to an all church was disappointed but as ever unrepentant who shall say what is possible or impossible in these spheres of action one cannot tell without a trial was his response and So eventually he is going to hatch a plan with two other people in fact actually these two other people come up with the plan and then Churchill
goes off on his own he's actually the only one out of the three that is able to escape at this point which why is why the book said at the beginning he wasn't planning to be alone without food without a compass without a plan plan but that's just how it happened but this is wild this is what he does like I I don't know the word for this I keep using the word megalomaniacal I don't even know what it is but what this guy
does is he's going to escape before he escapes he writes a letter to the Secretary of State for war of his enemy and he leaves it on his bed so it is found and discovered after he escapes unable to leave without having the last word regarding his imprisonment Churchill had written letter to the Secretary of State for war and left it where it could not be missed it was an imprudent not to mention dangerous thing
to do keep in mind he is hundreds of miles away from even neutral territory and he's deliberately poking the bear kind of like look what I did I escaped and this causes the entire like Nation to be mobilized and they they send out like thousands of pictures of him looking for him they even put out a poster saying you can capture him dead or alive this was not a smart thing to do and so the way he escapes is rather
basic he just waits for the guards to move and he goes to an area of the fence that's not guarded it's night time and he just jumps over it but what he did after that I thought was fascinating where he goes out and like the the prison is right in this town and he just decides he's like okay what am I going to do do I try to sneak out he's like no I'm just going to act as if I belong
here and so he said he made no attempt to hide or even keep in the shadows I said to myself always more audacity this is one of my favorite might be my favorite idea in the book Because at every turn that is that is Churchill's guiding maximum always more audacity so he knows he has to get to Portuguese East Africa what he doesn't know is how he's going to get there with no food no weapon no Compass so it's like well how
do I even know if I'm going in the right direction and so he he realizes hey I'm just going to follow the train tracks now he's outside of town he found the train tracks he's sitting like hiding in a bush and he asks himself he's like well what train should I take and then he instantly answer the first one of course but what he realizes without any supplies he only has a few days to
figure this out and nearly everywhere he turns he risk getting captured or and potentially killed and so the first night that he's free he knows he has to try to make cover the most distances possible because in the morning they're going to discover uh the fact that he wasn't there and the F it's kind of a rather humorous way that they discover uh that Churchill had escaped this also speaks to the fact that this really
wasn't like prison-like conditions guards would bring you coffee in the morning you actually could get regular haircuts and shaves so the way he's discovered is because he had forgotten that he had made an appointment for a shave and the barber was going around couldn't find him anywhere and so he's going around asking everybody's like where the hell's Churchill where's Churchill the people that were inside
the camp that knew he escaped were trying to talk him out was like oh he's sick or he's in the bathroom eventually the barber cre such a stink and refuses to leave that is how the guards realized that churel had escaped and so it's during this uncertain period of him trying to figure out how the hell do I get to Portuguese East Africa he's alone at night and what's fascinating is you ever hear This this term that there's no
atheists in a foxhole well Churchill was do like he wrote a lot about it he he was not a religious man and yet at maybe the deepest darkest point of his life he finds himself in hiding and he spends the night praying and he said he prayed long and earnestly and a day or two later he gets the biggest break of his life he is running low on food he is not he has no shelter he's all alone he has
no idea what the right move to make is and he's only 25 years old at this time and so he desperately needs a break more than any time in his life ever up until this point and so it says throughout his adult life which had largely been made up of a series of Wars each one following hard on the heels of the last Churchill had had moments of worry fear and even despair but never before had he been tentative this time CU I think he
understands like this is life or death right this time for perhaps the first time in his life he was paralyzed with indecision and so as he had been following the train tracks he jumped onto some trains and then jumped off he kept seeing these like little collections of civilization and he saw one that even in the middle of the night was lit up and so he walks towards it it is 3:00 in the
morning he walks up to it and he realizes it's a coal mine there's a bunch of small houses on the actual property of the coal mine right he has to take a risk and so he's describing how he felt at this point remember 3 in the morning he'd been on the run for multiple days very little water almost no food no weapon no Compass no shelter nothing right no knowledge that he's even on the right path and so it says
his strength was slipping the prospect of further futile wanderings terminated by hunger fever Discovery or Surrender what other choice did he have he Advanced towards the house and knocked upon the door and what happens next is unbelievable by an incredible Stroke of Luck Churchill knocked on the door of John Howard the mines manager and one of the few Englishmen who had been allowed to remain in the area during the war
when Howard agreed to help Churchill Churchill said he felt like a drowning man pulled out of water saying that's incredible luck I don't even think is is a good enough description right in this area this this part of the world that he's in there's 110,000 square miles around him and somehow Churchill had stumbled upon one of the few places in 110,000 s miles where it was still possible to find an
Englishman there had been a proclamation by the Bor government ordering British subjects to leave the country two months earlier this guy was allowed to stay because a German own the mind and said that his presence this englishman's presence was integral for the successful continued operation of the mine and even more remarkable earlier that day the government had been out to the mine
looking they they're searching house to house to house every single spot looking for Churchill this is where the part of the book where they said they had printed out over 3,000 pictures of Churchill's face largely spawned on from the fact that he decided to write that stupid letter to the Secretary of State of war and so John Howard may be running the mind but it's also there's a pun of Dutch people there there's Bor people
there he's like listen we have to I I don't we're I'm going to help you I'm committed to help you get out of the country right I'm going to help you escape he's going to give chel unbelievable on resources but until I come up with a plan there's only one place I can put you and he puts him deep down in the m in like a stall for a pony there's absolutely no lights down there it's pitch dark and it's covered in rats
and so JN and a small group of other Englishmen and people that want willing to help Churchill wind up taking him down there then Churchill sees him walk out and he has this realization right cuz like you see the the the lantern the light slowly disappear into the distance and it says his fate now resting in the hands of men he did not know but would have to trust and so after several days of planning and trying to figure out a
way to get churel out they realize like they can't just leave him down there it's completely dark it's it's rather inhumane there's like this secret hiding space in his office Churchill still can't go anywhere and he's got to be sneaked food but he least is inside and during the like it's actually light and he has access to books so that's another thing like fundamental understanding of
Churchill he was a terrible student but an incredible reader for most of his life Churchill had taken refuge in books he had never liked School finding it a grim joyless struggle and himself more often than not at the bottom of his class he wasn't well liked by the other boys and his parents had all but abandoned him so I haven't even touched on his relationship with his mom or his father who's passed away at this point
in the story when I read that other book called uh the young Titan I'm sure I'll go into more detail about that this is just about this incredible Escape uh that that he that that takes place in Africa but this idea where I'm pretty sure his dad thought he was dumb obviously not dumb so says he wasn't well likeed with the other boys and his parents had all but abandoned him so he
was left with few places to turn for Solace and friendship the greatest pleasure I had in those days was reading Churchill said he would read books on history philosophy economics and evolution he read for four or five hours every day I remember reading biographies of Aristotle Onasis so later on in his life towards the end of his life Churchill's the most famous person in the world and he's actually on he spends
a lot of time aboard aiso anas's yacht and what he does is he has that same schedule where he'd wake up wouldn't leave bed and he would just read and read and read for hours and hours in bed wind up getting out like noon or something like that so that habit of just reading for hours and hours and hours every day when he had essentially like a kid he kept for most of his life this is the really important point point
I need to make as much as he's a formidable individual he has unbelievable levels of self-belief he's obviously willing to take great risk and to try to like go after what he wants in life Churchill could not have done this alone other people had they had to go to Great Lengths to help him Escape or he would have never happened and they're doing so if they get caught under the penalty of death so they come up with
this idea there's a guy that works at the M that also has a side business where he buys wool from the Germans and then he ships it to the coast and that's exactly to the port where church will have to go this is the first like neutral territory which is Portuguese East Africa okay so they have this idea well we have these giant bales of wool that we're shipping by train enough to fill Seven box cars I think we can hide
you inside one of these and this is what I mean like he has to put his fate completely in the hands of other people they do this and so it says as soon as he burrowed into one of the wool Bales he would be obliged to rely on chance or Worse to Churchill's perspective someone else's intelligence and cunning this state of affairs was far less appealing to him than the dangers he would face if
he were once again on his own and so he gets in there and look at all the things they have for him they gave him a gun they gave him enough food to sustain him for a journey that was twice as long so they g a bunch of chickens to eat loaf of bread some fruit that kind of stuff they gave him three bottles of tea and a bottle of whiskey and this is not a big area the area that they they set up for
him is just tall enough so you can sit up so you can't stand and then just long enough to lie down now here is the crazy thing Charles Burnham right which is the guy that owns this wool business he's just a shopkeeper and he decides it's now his obligation to go with Churchill to make sure he gets there to safe because he's got a bribe the whole this entire book is just a series of bribes and so he decides like Not only would he
turn a blind eye as Churchill crawled into one of his box cars but he would ride with him to make sure that he actually made it so he's obviously not in the wool barrels he's in a compartment on the train and so it says the train would have to stop at several stations along the way and Burnham knew that it would be inspected by armed guards someone would have to intervene and so unexpectedly the bribes start
really early Burnham had expected to bribe a few men before he and Churchill reached their final destination but he now realized that he would have to open his wallet before they even left and so sometimes they want money at other St uh stops on like the TR different train stations they actually want like bottles of whiskey and so at every stop along the way you have burn him so this is what I mean about like he's running
interference for church all church can do is either sit up or or lay down he cannot make a sound he can't do anything he's his life is completely in Burnham's hands and there's there's all these guards everywhere and so they get close and like sometimes he also is like hey you want some coffee He he'll like distract the guards let's go walk and get coffee he'll do whatever he can to
keep them away from Churchill's hiding spot and so this lasts for three days three days where he's stuck inside this compartment right then once they cross the border this is this is what I mean about his maximum is always more audacity right right as soon as he was certain that no one could see or hear him he forced his head out and felt the wind rushing through his hair he lifted his revolver and shot it again and again
and again this is just like that's what I mean about the like Church's a little nuts he's going to write a letter before he escapes to the Secretary of State of War then he just crosses over the border that doesn't mean he's safe yet and he just decides hey I'm so I have to celebrate he's not free he's still stuck in the train when he's doing this lifts his revolver shoots it again and again
and again and literally screaming for joy and he said I sang and I shouted and crowed at the top of my voice I was carried away by thankfulness and Delight the problem is he was not yet out of the enemy's grass until he steps inside the doors of a British Consulate he could still be recaptured So eventually they stop at the Final Destination right Burnham is still with him Burnham sneaked across the border as well he
gets churo out of there it says churo leaped from the train and cover it was covered in cold dust looking black at a sweep so like the people that cleaned chimney sweepers so now there's another dangerous part of the trip because now they have to get from the train station to the British Consulate Burnham has to Burnham knows the area he has to lead him through this he actually gets seen
transporting a stranger to the British console later on he actually gets questioned and they threaten to kill him but they could never prove that it was Churchill and again his life his very life is in Burnham's hands as Churchill follow Burnham through the Turning chaos the two men did not exchange a single word or even acknowledge each each other's existence with no idea where he was Churchill turned tight Corners pass
small houses cross street after Street until suddenly Burnham stopped standing in Silence the older man gazed across the street his eyes on the roof of a large building Churchill suddenly realized with a catch in his throat flying from its roof were the bright red and blue colors of the Union Jack and we see through his actions that even after this ordeal his personality Remains the Same crossing the street church will
pass through the gates across the garden up to the front door thin exhausted covered in suit from head to toe with a graze gleam of Triumph in his eyes he demanded to see the council General the Council secretary who had no idea who this filthy mad man was attempted to turn him away be off he said the council cannot see you today instantly filled with outrage and fury Churchill did not
even acknowledge the fact that the secretary had spoken shouting at the top of his lungs he simply repeated his demand insisting that he see the council personally at once so great was his indignation and so loud his voice that it carried up to an open window wondering who could possibly be making such a racket the conso general himself put his head out the window a moment later the council stepped up to the
young man standing at his door and asked his name it was one of the last times in a long life that anyone would ever again need to ask Winston Churchill that question what an ending for the full story I highly recommend buying the book if you buy the book using the link that's in the show notes in your podcast player you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time that is 319 books down 1,000 a go and I'll talk to you again soon