Churchill: Wanted Dead or Alive - Hardcover

Sandys, Celia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0786225130 ISBN 13: 9780786225132

Publisher: Thorndike Pr, 2000

Synopsis

Sandys, Celia

About this title

About the Author

Celia Sandys is a granddaughter of Sir Winston Churchill. Her mother was Churchill's eldest daughter, Diana, and her father Lord Duncan-Sandys, the former cabinet minister and member of his father-in-law's wartime government. She is married, has four children and lives in Wiltshire. Her only previous book was From Winston With Love and Kisses: The Young Churchill (Sinclair Stevenson 1994). She has lectured in America, Canada, Japan and Britain.

From Publishers Weekly

A bestseller in the U.K., this portrait of Winston Churchill, written by his granddaughter, unapologetically presents the future prime minister as an action hero in the Boer War. It's rousing reading. Sandys's affection for her grandfather is obvious, but she shows enough of his grandiosity to maintain a reader's trust. In October 1899, at the age of 25, already having seen significant action in India and Cuba, Churchill went to South Africa as a journalist and eventually enlisted to serve. His brashness and his combat experience made him a headache for military commanders. Churchill was captured by the Boers (hence the title) and escaped by climbing out a latrine window. This episode has always been controversial (it figured prominently in Churchill's early p0litical battles) because, although Churchill fulfilled an officer's duty to try to escape, two other officers claimed that he left them behind and compromised their chances for escape. Sandys (From Winston with Love) maintains that her grandfather simply seized an opportunity. Amazingly, Churchill was never injured, though shrapnel and bullets frequently whizzed by his head. Of his disregard for bullets, he wrote, apparently only half in jest, to his mother: "I am so conceited I do not believe the Gods would create so potent a being as myself for so prosaic an ending." The book ends with Churchill returning to England and winning a Conservative seat in parliament two months short of his 26th birthday. Sandys is fully aware of the extent to which her grandfather had a finger to the political winds during his exploits: he sought the limelight as aggressively as he chased adventure. Because of Sandys's brisk narrative, as well as their knowledge of the man Churchill later became, readers will not hold young Winston's ambition against him.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Thorndike Pr
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0786225130
• ISBN 13: 9780786225132
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 472