Free Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill by Candice Millard Page A

explained in a letter to his mother. “The natives spit at Europeans—which provokes retaliation leading to riots.”
    Once back in England, Pamela and Winston’s relationship had deepened. He had invited her to Blenheim, where they had strolled the estate’s expansive grounds, and while he worked on his second book, The River War , he had let her read the first two chapters, takinggreat satisfaction in the fact that she had been “very much impressed.” He had even hoped that Pamela would help his mother campaign for him in Oldham. “I quite understand your not coming,” he had written to her after learning that she could not, or would not, travel to the gritty mill town. “It would perhaps have been a mistake—but I shall be sorry nevertheless.”In an attempt to make up for Pamela’s absence, Churchill had worn a charm she had given him, which he had hoped would bring him luck.
    It had not taken him long to fall hopelessly in love. Everyone could see the signs except, perhaps, Pamela herself, who had so many admirers she was used to being more vigorously pursued. “Why do you say I am incapable of affection,” Churchill, offended, had demanded in a letter to her the previous year. “Perish the thought. I love one above all others. And I shall be constant. I am no fickle gallant capriciously following the fancy of the hour. My love is deep and strong. Nothing will ever change it.” The month before war had been declared, Pamela had gone to Germany, leaving Winston bereft. “I am lonely without her,” he had admitted to his mother. “The more I know of her, the more she astonishes me. No one would understand her as I do.”
    Jennie, however, believed she did understand Pamela, all too well. In late August, she had shared with Winston a conversation she had had with Baron Revelstoke, who had told her that Pamela had broken his brother’s heart and ruined his career. Churchill had quickly leaped to her defense, insisting that “while not madly in love” with the baron’s brother, Pamela “respected his devotion” and would even have married him. “Now,” he shrugged, “she loves me.”
    Two days later, Jennie received another troubling report about Pamela, this time from a much closer source: the young man with whom she was romantically involved, George Cornwallis-West. “Jack [Winston’s brother] dined with me last night, and opened his heart to me about Miss Pamela,” George wrote to her late that summer. “He doesn’t often talk so I was pleased with his confidence. He doesn’t think much of her, in fact he dislikes her, he says she is such an awful humbug, and is the same to three other men as sheis to Winston. He tells me they went about at Blenheim as if they were engaged, in fact several people asked if it was so. I am sorry for Winston, as I don’t think he would be happy with her. I can’t make her out. She is certain[ly] very clever, in a doubtful sense of the word.”
    When it came to taking advice, however, especially from George, Churchill was his mother’s son. He was defiantly determined to decide for himself where he would go, what he would do and whom he would love. The question, anyway, like everything else in his life, had temporarily been cast aside. Nothing, not even Pamela, had been able to compete for his attention since war had been declared.

    Churchill was no longer a soldier, but he was still a writer, and a very good one. It had been that skill alone that had earned him a ticket to South Africa and an excuse to be near the fighting. As war had grown increasingly more likely, the most powerful publishers in London had begun rounding up their best foreign correspondents and scouring the city for new ones. Again and again, among the country’s most cutthroat newspapermen, one name in particular had risen to the fore: Winston Churchill.
    In fact, a bidding war for Churchill had begun before the Boers had even sent their ultimatum.On September 18, nearly a month before