BRIAN LAMB: Candice Millard, your third book, Hero of the Empire, where did you travel in order to be able to write this book?
CANDICE MILLARD: Well, to be honest, that's one of the reasons I wanted to write the book because I had such an incredible opportunity. I spent a lot of time in England, obviously, in the Churchill Archives in Cambridge, at Blenheim Palace, at the National Army Museum, the Archives at Kew.
But, what was most fascinating was going to South Africa. I spent several weeks there, traveling everywhere, that Churchill did. And it's extraordinary, you know, the - I think the Boer War has been largely forgotten here, even in England, not many people know much about it, but in South Africa it's everywhere, you know, there are battlefields, museums, archives.
But specifically to this story, I was able to go to where Winston Churchill was captured. To where he was kept as a prisoner of war in Pretoria. The same building is still there. It's now a public library.
I stood in the trapdoor in the floor of his room where he had thought about tunneling his way out. I went to where he was hiding in a coal mine shaft with white rats. And I went in to Mozambique, what is now Mozambique, but was in Portuguese, East Africa.
They still have the same building that was the British Consulate where he went when he was finally a free man.
LAMB: You mentioned the Boer War.
MILLARD: Yes.
LAMB: How many were there?
MILLARD: There were two. This is actually the second Boer War. There was the first Boer War was 20 years earlier in 1880. And it was a much shorter war that the British to their shock and horror actually lost. And this was the second go-around.
LAMB: So, there are a lot of people possibly at this moment saying, "What in the world is a Boer?" B-O-E-R.
MILLARD: That's right. So, the Boers had been living in South Africa for centuries. They were immigrants, largely Dutch, German, and Huguenot. And they had really, over that time, kind of, transformed into something new, like a new ethnic group. They were not European. They were not African, but they were Boer.
And they and even developed their own language, Afrikaans, which is this sort of strange mixture Dutch and Portuguese and Khoikhoi, all these words as they needed them that they - that they developed. They were very, very religious. They were unabashedly racist. They were stubbornly independent. And most of all, they just wanted to be left alone.
LAMB: Winston Churchill, when did you - the very - the first time you got interested in him? And what made you think you could write another book on Winston Churchill?
MILLARD: It's audacious, isn't it? I mean as they say there are like 12,000 books written about him. I think more books about him than anyone but Napoleon and Jesus. And believe me, it felt very daunting to me. But I had actually - so like most people, I've been interested in Winston Churchill for a long time. He's an absolutely fascinating character. Not a perfect man by any means, but an extraordinary one. And - but about 25 years ago, I had heard this story that when he was a young man he was captured in South Africa and was a POW and escaped.
And it just stayed with me all these years because it stunned me. I was - I couldn't believe I didn't know this story and that this had happened and then after I turned in the manuscript for my second book, I started to think about it more, and I thought another unknown aspect is the Boer War itself.
It was really the beginning of modern warfare. And so, I knew that I had this sort of larger palette to work with and it's just this incredible adventure story. And it's really the formation of the man we know as Winston Churchill.
LAMB: Get back to the Boer War in a moment, but I want to bring folks up-to-date on your past two books. You wrote a book in 2005 called River of Doubt. Here you are talking about that and want to ask you more about it.
MILLARD: OK.
(Video)
This was a serious scientific expedition that became an extraordinary story of survival. It was a contest of man against nature, man against man, and even man against himself. While Roosevelt and his men were on this river, they lost nearly all of their supplies to rapids. One man drowned. Another man was murdered.
The rest of the men including Roosevelt's own son nearly starved. And when the survivors emerged from the rainforest, they were in rags. They were shadowed and attacked by indigenous tribesmen. Roosevelt became gravely ill and he nearly took his own life in an attempt to save the other men.
(End of Video)
LAMB: Another fellow that there's been a lot written about, a lot of books, Teddy Roosevelt and what was that book about?
MILLARD: So it was about this expedition that he took down this unmapped river in the Amazon. So it was after the election of 1912 when he had run for a third term as a third party candidate, the Bull Moose candidate, and lost.
And for the first time in his life, he was a pariah, so he had put a democrat Woodrow Wilson in the White House because he had split the Republican vote. And he was this incredible naturalist. He had been invited to South America on a speaking tour and he thought; while I'm there I'll go on a collecting trip. When he gets there, nothing is well-planned and he's given this opportunity to go down this completely unknown river.
It's extraordinarily dangerous. Three men died on this trip. As I said, Roosevelt nearly took his own life. And it was just this unbelievable encounter. I mean it wasn't - it wasn't an adventure. It was what the subtitle said, this was his really his darkest, darkest journey.
And I went to this river and it's still incredibly remote. And I was able to spend some time with the Cinta Larga, which is the group that attacked Roosevelt and his men and nobody - before I wrote this book even knew what tribe it was.
And I figured out who it was. I spent some time with them. And I sort of understood why they didn't just massacre Roosevelt and his men, because they certainly could have and had any, every incentive to do so. So, it was just this unbelievable experience for me. And I loved having the opportunity to tell that story.
LAMB: You used to work for the National Geographic, but this was the first big book. Why did the publisher and who was the publisher buy this idea?
MILLARD: So, yes, I was completely unknown, but it's this extraordinary story. So you've got the Amazon, you know, the richest ecosystem in the world, absolutely fascinating, so you have the opportunity to talk about evolution and all of these incredibly interesting things.
And you have Theodore Roosevelt. And it, again, you know, a figure that there's so much interest in, but again, this is similar to Churchill because this is after his active political career. So while the story was sort of known, not that much was known about it because not much attention was - have been given to it.
So - and because it has drowning and murder and all of these other things, it sold very quickly to Doubleday and that's still my publisher. I'm very fortunate to have the same publisher and the same editor, the same agent for 15 years.
LAMB: Who was the first person in your life that said, "You know, you can write."
MILLARD: That was actually my husband. He was a - he was a war correspondent for years. He was with the New York Times. He was a bureau chief in Managua. And he is actually the person who first told me the story about Winston Churchill because he began his career as a journalist in South Africa covering the ANC.
And he had left the Times to go to law school and start this company. And I was just working for him freelance and gave him some clips. And when he told me that I could write, I believed him.
LAMB: How did you two get to the Kansas City area of Kansas?
MILLARD: So my - I had actually moved there right before my senior year of high school. My father worked for Sprint, which is headquartered in Kansas City. I'd grown up in Ohio, which is another connection I had to James Garfield, the subject of my second book.
So I'm very Midwestern. And so, I met him there. He started his company in Kansas City. He had grown up in Wichita. So, that's where I met him. And then I ended up moving here to Washington D.C. for six years to work for National Geographic.
LAMB: How did that first book sell?
MILLARD: It sold very well. It was a - it was a New York Times bestseller. And again, it's - it was just an incredible gift to me because it had all of these elements to - just to make a great story.
LAMB: You two got married in 2001. But you've had three kids in the middle of all these three books.
MILLARD: Right.
LAMB: How old are those kids today?
MILLARD: They are 14, 11, and 8. And it's funny because when people talk about, you know, writing a book is like having a baby. To me it very much is because it's all been mixed up together. It's - for the last 15 years of my life, it's been books and babies.
LAMB: Your second book was 2011. Here you are talking about the James Garfield book.
(Video)
MILLARD: James Garfield was not as he has often been remembered to be. Just a bland, bearded 19th century politician. He was one of the most extraordinary man ever elected president. Although, he was born into desperate poverty, he became a professor of literature, mathematics, and ancient languages when he was just a sophomore in college.
By the time he was 26 years old, he was a college president. He knew the entire Aeneid by heart in Latin. While he was in Congress, he wrote an original proof of the Pythagorean Theorem.
LAMB: So when did you discover the story about Garfield?
MILLARD: So I was looking for another subject that had a lot of science in it. And I was actually researching Alexander Graham Bell. And I'm just doing general research and I stumbled upon the story of him inventing this induction balance to try to find the bullet in Garfield after Garfield had been shot.
And it really stunned me because, again, I had never heard the story before. And I couldn't really understand it because Bell was young. He had just invented the telephone five years earlier, so he was suddenly famous. He finally had a little bit of money. He had all of these ideas he wanted to pursue. But as soon as Garfield was shot, he abandoned everything and turned his world upside down to try to help him.
And like most Americans, I didn't know anything about Garfield besides the fact that he had been assassinated. And so, I started researching him and I was stunned, you know, he was this extraordinary man. Absolutely brilliant, incredibly courageous, you know, hid a runaway slave, was instrumental in bringing about black suffrage and had so much promise for our young country.
And it was such a tragedy and it never should have happened. And I was just hooked. And I thought, I don't know if anybody is going to read a book about James Garfield, because the problem is not only do they not know anything, they think there is nothing interesting to know, you know, he is a bearded, gilded age president.
It's just - it's not going to be interesting. And he was absolutely fascinating. And so, it really meant a lot to me that people took a chance on this book.
LAMB: How much - how much on - you know, travel that you have to do for that book and where did you go?
MILLARD: So it was a different - obviously a different kind of travel. I was in Ohio a lot, doing a lot of research there. His home was actually made into the first presidential library and still 80 percent original to the time he lived in it.
There are a lot of archives in Cleveland, et cetera. And I spent a ton of time at the Library of Congress and the presidential papers. In fact, I had - my youngest child was a baby at that time and I rented an apartment in Virginia and brought my parents and my two youngest children and just went in and just spent all day, every day in the archives.
And it was extraordinary. And, you know, it's amazing what the Library of Congress has and people don't realize. And if I could tell a quick story, so, you know, there are lots of rules as there should be with our national treasures. I was - and I'm rule follower, so I was carefully following the rules. And you can just have one card with maybe like five bins - one bin on your table, one file folder. So, I'm carefully following. And I open a file and again this is James Garfield, so no one's looked at these - at these archives for many years, probably since they'd been donated.
And he died in 1881, so I'm looking through and I open it up. And there is an envelope in this file, but the front of it's facing the table. I don't know what's in it. I've gone through many, many things. I open it and all this hair spills out onto the table.
And I turn it over and on the front is written, "Clipped from President Garfield's head on his death bed." I'm like, oh no. And I'm, you know, desperately trying to get back in. I think, you know, they're going to throw me out. And my career is over. But at the same time I was panicking, I was so moved by it, you know, it looked like you could have clipped it from your child's head yesterday, you know?
And it's this connection that you get to these people who become almost mythical to us. We study them at this remove. And it was just this reminder, you know, he was 49 years old and it was this unbelievable tragedy. And it was this human connection that was profound to me at the time.
LAMB: What town did you - did you grow up partly in Ohio?
MILLARD: I did. I - until I was 17, I grew up in Ohio in a little town.
LAMB: What town?
MILLARD: It's called Lexington. It's, kind of, between Cleveland and Columbus. It's just a small largely working class town, but a great place to grow up.
LAMB: And what did you parents do?
MILLARD: My father worked for United Telephone of Ohio and then worked for Sprint. And my mother was a secretary. And I had three sisters and a very happy childhood.
LAMB: You went to college where? And what did you study?
MILLARD: I went to a small liberal arts school in Kansas called Baker University and I studied English. And then I went to Texas. I went to Baylor and got my masters in English.
LAMB: Where did you learn to research?
MILLARD: National Geographic. It was - I will always say it was really my true education because you learn to just dig very, very deeply into a subject, just immerse yourself in it. And most importantly of all, I learned how to find the experts.
Whatever subject you're working on, there is somebody who knows it really, really well and has spent years of their life studying it. And what was extraordinary to me is that when I started to write my first book, I thought, you know, it's one thing to call somebody and say, "I'm Candice Millard from National Geographic, will you help me?"
It's a totally different thing to call and say "I'm Candice Millard." Full stop. "Will you help me?" But it didn't matter, absolutely, they helped me because they were enthusiastic about their subject. And they were appreciative that somebody was interested and genuinely wanted to get it right.
LAMB: On your website is some video that shows you at your workstation.
MILLARD: Oh.
LAMB: And I assume that is in your home and it shows all the books on the shelves. Your previous books and all that. We never see your face on this. Was that - explain where that is.
MILLARD: So that's actually in my husband's company. He has his own company, a publishing company. And he gave me this fantastic workspace. And it really helps having three kids, so I just have - I work in school hours. I drop them off. I go to work. I close the door. And I'm in this different world, different time period.
And it's sort of disconcerting, actually when I have to leave to go pick them up because I have to, kind of, return to the present day. But it's fantastic. And as you can see, I have those three monitors, which when sometimes I have to work at home. I really - I really miss them because they're hugely useful.
LAMB: You have told the story of three white men.
MILLARD: Right.
LAMB: Three older men. Why? I mean why not mix it up with other kinds of people? What is it that attracts to these three leaders?
MILLARD: Well, like I said, I'm looking for a great story. And it has to be a strong enough story that can support other things that I want to talk about, so whether it's the Amazon rainforest or it's the evolution of modern medical care, in this case modern warfare.
So you have - you need a strong enough story to keep people with you and so you can talk about all these other things. And I had a ton of primary source material to work with, you know, a lot of letters, diaries, newspaper accounts, so I could have dialogue, and so I could have all those little details that you really need, especially with the narrative non-fiction to hopefully bring a story alive.
And for each of these, you know, people sometimes say, "Oh, you write biographies." And I don't write biographies, but I hope that the story I am telling will be illuminating about this person and this period in time.
To me it is. To me, I can see - with Winston Churchill, you can see so - even though on the outside he looks completely different because he is so young, inside he is fully formed. And it's fascinating to see that. And you see that through his writings and few of the things that everybody around him is saying about him and to watch this - watch this growth and know where it's all headed.
So these are just fascinating stories to me. And - but I'm absolutely open and I have some ideas for my next one and one is actually a woman.
LAMB: Let's go back to the Boer War story and show on the screen a map of the South Africa area. And you can explain to us what we're seeing.
MILLARD: OK. All right. OK. So when Churchill arrived, he first arrived at the Cape of Good Hope, but the war had already began a few days before, and the orange area of the Transvaal that was - that's the main area of war.
And so, right there where you see Pretoria, just below it is Ladysmith. And Ladysmith was already under siege. The British were trapped inside, the Boers surrounding them. So Churchill wanted to get to the front as quickly as he could.
He actually came with Sir Redvers Buller who was the commander in chief in South Africa. So he's on the same ship, but he knew the British army was going to be very slow, so he set off on his own. He went by train a little bit into the interior and then he cut across and he went to the Indian Ocean, took a small mail boat into - until he could get over to the Transvaal.
But by the time he made it close to Ladysmith, it was shut down. He couldn't get anywhere near it. So he had to stop about 40 miles south of it in a little town called Estcourt.
LAMB: So I - you know, as I was reading the book, I kept thinking, these are words and places I have never seen in my life. Was there any concern that people who are reading it in the United States would be - this would all be hard to understand?
MILLARD: Well, I think that there is a lot of interest in South Africa. And we know a lot about their more recent history, obviously with the Afrikaans and the Apartheid and with Nelson Mandela. And this is really what comes before, the Boers become the Afrikaners.
And so - and so, I knew that there would be interest in it. And we have tons of maps. And I try to take them through and explain the history and I hope that I can sort of carry the readers with me, and so they understand what's happening before we actually get to the real action.
LAMB: When Winston Churchill went to this part of the world, how old was he?
MILLARD: He was 24 years old. And this is his fourth war on three different continents. He's already written three books and he's already run for parliament and lost. So he was a little - a little ambitious.
LAMB: How was able to be both a correspondent and a military man at the same time?
MILLARD: So he had actually left the military so that he could run for parliament. He thought he - the reason he got into the military was really the only job he had ever had. The only job he had been trained for, but he called it the glittering gateway to distinction.
So, he thought - what I'll do? And he threw himself in incredibly, incredibly dangerous situations again and again so he would be noticed, so that he could win medals. And he thought - that will propel me to the political stage. And that will, you know, sort of, fulfill this destiny that I believe I had. But it was - it wasn't happening for him. He was frustrated. It was moving too slow. So he stopped. He ran for parliament. He lost and he realized - I was too soon. I leaped too fast. I need to make a name for myself.
So when the Boer War broke out, he saw that as an opportunity, but he was no longer in the military, so he went there as correspondent. That was his way to get there. And he had also have been working as a journalist for a while. That's how he was supporting himself.
LAMB: You talk about in your acknowledgments that you first were introduced to Winston Churchill by William Manchester?
MILLARD: Right. Right. I mean, and how many …
LAMB: What year?
MILLARD: How many of us can say that? I mean it goes back quite a ways, you know, William Manchester is extraordinary. I mean I think he is - so I think in the world of Churchill studies, it's obviously Sir Martin Gilbert who just passed away about a year ago and it was such a loss because he did such extensive, extensive research.
But William Manchester absolutely brought the story alive for me and I think for so many readers. And so, I just wanted to give credit where credit was due because that's what really captured my imagination.
LAMB: How much of his kind of writing got your attention?
MILLARD: Of Churchill's or Manchester's?
LAMB: Of Manchester's.
MILLARD: A lot of it. I think that he is very, very vivid, you know? There is no - you never feel like there is a forced march to get to whatever the big event is everything builds up toward it and everything you might think is a tangential story, it turns out to be of great importance. And again, it's incredibly vivid. And I was absolutely drawn to that.
LAMB: In 2012, (Paul Reid) was here and here is an excerpt from that interview. He did the third book of the - because William Manchester had died. Let's listen to just a little bit of this.
MILLARD: OK.
(Video)
(Paul Reid): He read his Playdough and his Aristotle and Cicero and I, at one point I said, "Yes, he's a Victorian man." But he made himself into a classical man. And he had the - I think he lived a life in accordance with the, you know, the precursor to the Christian ethic that you find in Plato and the Greek philosophers, a humanist but godless ethic.
(End of Video)
LAMB: You say in your book, he mentioned this, a Victorian man. You say he was more of a Rooseveltian than he was a Victorian. Explain that.
MILLARD: That's the American in him. And that's what I see. I see a lot of similarities between Theodore Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, you know, Winston Churchill's mother was American, Jennie Jerome. And he always felt a connection to America.
And he was very much a self-advertiser. And he was called that. He was called a medal hunter. He was called pushful, the younger - young whippersnapper because it was very unusual for a member of the British aristocracy, a member of the British military to, sort of, show their ambition openly and, sort of, brag about what they had achieved. And I've always felt that that was the American in him. And it just makes him unusual, especially for the position he held in England.
LAMB: You mentioned Martin Gilbert who did die just recently. Here he was in 1991 on this program, talking about Winston Churchill. He was his official biographer before it was over. Just a little bit.
MILLARD: Yes.
(Video)
Martin Gilbert: In 1900, after a battle which many British people regarded a great victory in South Africa. They're excited. The flags went up. He wrote a piece about it, a journalistic piece, he'd been at the battle, but he ended his piece. "If modern men of light and leading would see the face of war more often, ordinary folk would see it hardly ever."
MILLARD: That's a beautiful quote.
LAMB: It is. But he went on then to lead one of the worst wars in the history of the, you know, the world.
MILLARD: Right.
LAMB: What do you, you know - the language is good, but what does it mean?
MILLARD: Well and that's one of the - one of the things that's interesting to me about this story, this part of Churchill's life is that I think most of us when we think of Winston Churchill, we think of the older man sending young men into war.
But no one knew better and few knew as well the realities of war, the tear and the devastation. And he said to his mother, after his second war, "You know, the raw comes through, you can't gild it."
And he had absolutely, you know, he had nearly been killed many times. And shot at. At one time a horse that was standing right next to him was killed and the feather was shot off the top of his hat. And he had killed men himself. He had watched his friends - not just - not just killed but mutilated, you know, sliced to ribbons.
And so, he absolutely knew the disaster that war was. He found it accelerating, but he was incredibly clear-eyed about it. And to me, I think most importantly, very magnanimous in victory, always the first to reach out the hand of friendship and to try to help the enemy rebuild. That was important to him. And that started even in the war in South Africa.
LAMB: When did you start your research on this book?
MILLARD: I started about five years ago, right after I finished my manuscript for Destiny of the Republic. I had had this sort of percolating in the back of my mind. I knew I was really interested in it.
And so, I started the research right away, but it's a big job, you know, as we were talking about earlier, there is a lot to know about Winston Churchill, even at this young - at this young age and a lot of travel involved and just a lot of time thinking about it.
I think that, you know, a lot of people who are interested in writing think that writing is sitting at a keyboard and typing, but it's really thinking, you know, you have to gather all the information. You have to absorb it and then you have to understand it. And then you have to figure out how you're going to tell the story.
LAMB: If I figure it right, when you started the research on this one, your oldest was about nine.
MILLARD: Right, right.
LAMB: How do you - how have you juggled raising three kids and having time to think and read and research and travel?
MILLARD: Well, it takes longer than I always think it's going to. I always laugh with my editor because I'm always late on my deadline and not just like, you know, a week or a month, but like a year - a year late and I keep saying, "Oh, you know, yes, three months or actually, you know, maybe six months."
So it does take longer, but I work school hours and I drop them off and I go to work and I'm in this world and I actually think in some ways it's easier than if I didn't have children and didn't have those other demands on my time because it forces discipline on you, you know?
I know I've got this window of time to work and that's it. And so, I really buckle and down and it helps to have an office somewhere else. I'm not thinking about the laundry or the messy house.
LAMB: In 1900, in that era, how big was the British Empire?
MILLARD: It was huge. I mean it was larger than the Roman Empire. It was at its height. And that was a problem for the British Empire because they were spread so thin, they were constantly putting down revolts. And so - but they were winning those other wars usually, but it was very difficult, and so that's why I think the Boer War surprised them so much because they thought it was going to be another colonial war. It started in October. They thought it's definitely going to be over by Christmas and it lasted almost three years.
LAMB: So what was within the British Empire - what kind of countries did they have control of then?
MILLARD: So it was spread out all over, from Ireland all through Africa, obviously into India. I mean it was just incredibly diverse and incredibly complex and difficult. And I think that it - that's when it all sort of started to come undone.
LAMB: You say in your book there were 450 million people under the British Empire, a quarter of the world.
MILLARD: Right.
LAMB: How did Churchill get in a position of any importance whatsoever at age 24?
MILLARD: So a lot of it was thanks to his mother. So he had this very beautiful, very charismatic mother. His father, you know, who had been chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons had died when his father was only 45 years old.
And so she was a young widow. She caught the eye of many people including the Prince of Wales. So she had a lot of connections. And he told her, he said, "This is a pushing aid and we must push with the best."
And so he was always saying, you know, "Get me an appointment here. Get me a regiment here." So wherever a war would break out in this vast British Empire, he wanted to be there and he would push and push her to push and push somebody else to get him an assignment. And so, he was always sort of trotting all over the world to - again, to try to be noticed.
LAMB: When did you change your mind as you went through your research? Or when did you say, "Wow, I had no idea?"
MILLARD: Again and again and again, I mean I - and this happens every single time. I get in thinking I understand the story and it completely turns on me. And with this what was so shocking to me was how, as I was saying earlier, how fully formed Churchill was at that time, you know, if you read his letters - so there was a love interest at this time. This young woman, Pamela Plowden, and he's writing to her when he's - when he's running for parliament the first time. And he said to her, "You know, I don't know what's going to happen with this election. I don't know what the result is going to be, but with every speech I give, I feel my growing powers."
And he had this idea of this destiny that he had. Now, there was a lot of luck along the way, but he absolutely knew, he had what he called faith in his star. And it's just astonishing, I mean, I don't know what you were like at 23, 24, 25, but I had no idea who I was, who I wanted to be, how to get there, but he had it all planned out.
LAMB: You say early in the book that he had 1,500 toy soldiers.
MILLARD: Yes, yes. He did. He - and you can still see - some of them at Blenheim, some are actually in the war rooms in London. And he was fascinated by war from a very young age. And he's a direct descendent of the first Duke of Marlborough, John Churchill who is considered to be one of the greatest generals in British history.
And he was very, very much aware of that legacy. And he, you know, he went to Sandhurst Royal Military Academy. And he loved the war games, but he always thought it was a shame that it couldn't be real. So the first chance he got, he jumped into war.
LAMB: So, how many people lived in that whole area we saw on the map?
MILLARD: I mean it was - the Boers were very, very scattered, they're, you know - if you - if you're only talking about the Boers, they were obviously - there was a large African population which was very much oppressed and discriminated against.
But the Boers were scattered, and that's actually what made them a very dangerous and difficult enemy, because they - so the British are still fighting in their perfect, precise lines. They had only recently given up their red coats. They called this the Khaki war, so they - going into the Boer War, they have no idea what they're up against. And the Boers who know this area very well and who have been fighting for centuries, fighting with the Zulu or hunting. They know how to just disappear and to come at their enemy, and so it was shocking. So, you have these thousands of people coming thousands of miles to fight this war that they understand nothing about.
LAMB: I want to show the cover of your book, could you talk about the helmet on the head of Winston Churchill?
MILLARD: Right.
LAMB: And you call it a cork-pith helmet.
MILLARD: Right
LAMB: When you see that picture of him, right, by the way, where does that come from?
MILLARD: That actually is from an earlier war. That's from Battle of Omdurman in Sudan right before this war.
LAMB: How much education did he have at this point?
MILLARD: So he only had the education of Sandhurst. So he had gone to Harrow and then he went right into Sandhurst, where it actually took him three attempts to pass the test to get into Sandhurst, but he didn't have a college education. And he felt that deeply, actually. And when he was in India his first assignment in the military, he was having his mother constantly sending him books to try to educate himself and obviously was a theme throughout his life. He was a voracious reader.
LAMB: So what rank was he in the military? And how did it, what was the arrangement that he was also a correspondent?
MILLARD: So he - so he actually got in trouble with that. So, he was able to - there were no rules against being a soldier correspondent at the time, where he was an - he was an officer. But he was openly critical of many of the generals, especially Kitchener and who hated him.
And that then continued throughout their lives. And so because of Churchill, because of the role he played and because he was so openly critical, they finally did make a rule. You can't be both. So, you can be in the military or you can be a correspondent, but you can't do both.
But then, during the Boer War, when he becomes this huge hero and he makes his escape, he goes back and he's asked - Buller asked him, "So thank you for what you've done. You've raised morale."
They had - just had a black week, where they had lost battle after battle. "What can we do for you?" And he says, "Give me a regiment. I want to go and I want to fight." And he puts him in this horrible position because he thinks, "I can't do that. We have this rule because of you."
And Churchill understood what he was doing. He knew how difficult it was, but he didn't care. He wanted to be able to do both because he already have this commitment to the Morning Post to be their correspondent, but he absolutely wanted to get in and fight.
And so they said, "All right. We'll let you do it." And so he ends up - it's just one of these incredible turns of events in history, so he ends up going with a regiment to Pretoria on the day that it fell to the British. And he takes over the prison and he frees the men who have been his fellow prisoners. He puts in the prison his former jailers. And he watches as the Boer flag is torn down and the Union Jack is hoisted in its place.
LAMB: You say in your acknowledgements that you talked to his granddaughter?
MILLARD: Yes. Celia Sandys, who is really an extraordinary person and have studied him really carefully. I mean, she was close to him when he was alive. But she's also, sort of, made it her career to - she calls it chasing Churchill, so she's written many books about him.
She's gone all around the world, to every place he's gone. And she wrote a book about this. And it's a - it's a different kind of book in that she takes her son with her. And they are in this book, you know, in present day and saying, "OK, this is where these events took place." But she - but she spent a lot of time in South Africa doing that. And she was very, very gracious to me.
LAMB: Here she is 16 years ago talking about the Boer War.
(Video)
Celia Sandys: 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 in sickly hesitation. And then with a third resolve scrambled up and over.
Landing among the bushes on the other side of the prison wall, Winston Churchill placed his feet firmly on the international stage. Just 25, he could now begin to fulfill his own prophecy. I have faith in my star, that I'm intended to do something in the world.
(End of Video)
LAMB: Who is her father or mother?
MILLARD: Her mother actually was one of Churchill's daughters. I'm forgetting her name which - but she - so there is Mary and - anyway she was - she was very close and her mother unfortunately took her own life.
And so, I - you know, I think that she just feels this very, very strong connection with her grandfather and that absolutely come through in everything she does.
LAMB: What do you think you would have seen had you been able to have a conversation or a dinner with Winston Churchill at age 24?
MILLARD: I think I would have seen an absolutely arrogant, ambitious, fascinating young man who was determined to fulfill what he believed was his destiny. And I think that's what's so interesting about him, is that I think there are a lot of young men who think they're going to do or - and young women who think they're going to do something great in this world.
But the difference is that a lot of them sort of wait for things to happen to them. And instead, Winston Churchill seized this opportunity, I mean, he couldn't have predicted what happened to him in South Africa. He couldn't have believed that it would take this incredible turn. But it did. And he seize control of it and he - as he himself later said, "You know, could I have known it, this misfortune would lay the foundations for my later life."
So I think even at that time, it would have been fascinating to talk to him and be able to sort of look into the future and see what becomes of him and the world.
LAMB: Why was he hero of the empire?
MILLARD: So that's what he had always wanted to be, right? And so this war after war that he throws himself into, he wants to be gallant. He wants to be noticed. He doesn't want to just to do something quietly. He wants everybody to take attention because he thought that that was his pathway to power. And absolutely he was. He was considered a hero throughout England after he made it out alive, you know?
Again, the British were losing the war at that point and so this really raised morale. They needed something. They needed a hero, somebody to get behind. And here was this young man who had humiliated the Boers and had this incredible adventure. And it was an incredible boost to all of them and their morale and he was a hero.
And he himself said, so he very quickly ran for Parliament again in a matter of months and won this time. And he wrote a letter to the prime minister at that time and he said there's no question that it was because of my popularity rising out of the war in South Africa.
LAMB: Got it. You wrote down a quote in your book, "Rode on my grey pony all along the front of the skirmish line where everyone else was lying down in cover." And then at the end of the quote, "Without the gallery, things are different."
MILLARD: Right, right.
LAMB: Explain what that all means.
MILLARD: Right yes. So he, again, he wanted to be noticed. So he said, given an audience, no act is too daring or too noble. And so what happened to him, he was in British India in the siege of Makaland and he had bought this horse from a young soldier who had been killed actually earlier in the same war.
And he, to the astonishment and horror of the men around him, he rode this white pony on the battlefield just hoping that somebody in charge would notice and think, "He is incredibly brave and he deserves a Victoria Cross for it," when the chances were those much more likely that the enemy would notice him first and be killed.
LAMB: This is a little bit out of context, but it's an interesting story about his mother who you said was American. I want you to explain how she was an American and on what basis, but the story about the fundraiser, the party, the same day that he was, I believe, taken prisoner, her name was Jennie. What's that -- what was that all about?
Because the quote that got my attention was somebody said, "She was a bit short on brain."
MILLARD: No, that was the young man she ended up marrying.
LAMB: Oh, yes, of course, yes, I'm sorry, yes.
MILLARD: Yes. So Jennie Jerome, so her father was well known in the United States. She had grown up in Brooklyn and he had, sort of won several fortunes and lost several fortunes and you know, was having all of these affairs. So her mother finally took her and her sisters to France and it was soon after that that she met Lord Randolph Churchill.
So she was sort of this glittering figure in British society and loved it, loved that spotlight. And I think, you know, Churchill adored his mother, but again at a distance. He was put in boarding school at a very young age and really didn't see his parents very much. His father was very busy with his political career. His mother was very busy with her parties and still when Churchill is going off to war, so she threw this huge benefit.
She wanted to put together a hospital ship to go to South Africa, but one of the reasons she wanted to go is because she was in love with this young man who was actually only two weeks older than Winston Churchill was. And she tells him, look, I'm going to marry George. And he says, you know, I don't think you will. I think the family pressure will crush him.
But Jennie was -- I mean her son took this from her, you know, she was very determined. She didn't care what anybody else thought, she was having a great time. And she did end up marrying George and you'll be shocked to know that it didn't last.
LAMB: How long?
MILLARD: Just a few years and he ended up then leaving her for another older woman who was a well-known actress.
LAMB: George Cornwallis-West was his name.
MILLARD: Right.
LAMB: A bit short on brain, I see the quote there.
MILLARD: He was very handsome, but yes, not an intellect.
LAMB: So when people get your book, what's your -- the part of it where you've found yourself having the most fun?
MILLARD: It's during his escape actually. So everything -- there's a lot to explain until you get to the heart of the story, you know. As you were saying most Americans don't know anything about the Boer War or who the Boers were and understanding what, what's Winston Churchill doing in South Africa anyway, what's going on?
But once you get to where he is on this armored train and he is 24 years old, he is just a correspondent, he is one of the few civilians on the train and it's attacked by the Boers and he immediately takes charge of the defense of the train even though there are lots of soldiers on the train, legitimate, uniformed soldiers, their commander is right there, the man who is a friend of Churchill's who had invited him on his armored train and he takes charge.
And what's more extraordinary is that everybody listens. They listen to him and they do what he tells them to do. And when the train gets away, every man who makes it out alive credits Winston Churchill, his resourcefulness and his bravery for saving their lives.
LAMB: So how does he become a prisoner?
MILLARD: So he actually jumped off, so they finally free what's left of the train. Half of it sort of catapulted off the tracks, but half was sort of blocking the tracks, they were able to get it off and get the train going. Well there's this hailstorm of bullets and shells coming down, raining down on them from the Boers and they get away. And he jumps off because he thinks there are more men back there who are wounded and he's going to go back and help them.
He gets there and he realizes that they've already been taken prisoner. And he looks up and he sees these two Boers coming after him and he reaches for his pistol and he realizes that he left it on the train. And he was a huge admirer of Napoleon, and he remembered a quote from Napoleon saying that "If you are alone and unarmed, there is no shame in surrender." And he raises his hands in surrender.
LAMB: Where did they put him in prison?
MILLARD: They take him to Pretoria to this building. It was a teacher's college. It was called the States Model School and its today, it's this -- it's a public library. The building still stands there, but it was a prison just for officers. There is another place for the soldier prisoners and it had -- it was surrounded by this 6.5 foot tall corrugated iron paling and constantly patrolled by armed guards.
LAMB: How long was he there in prison?
MILLARD: He was only there for about a month and he immediately -- I mean as soon as he was taken prisoner, he's furious because he thinks, you know, this incredible war is going on without him with all these opportunities for gallantry and to make his name and make his mark and he wants to escape from them. And he's miserable. He hated being a prisoner. In fact years later, he writes that he hated every minute of his captivity more than he had ever hated any other period in his whole life.
So from the moment he was captured, he was making plans to escape. But being Winston Churchill, they're not sort of simple, quiet plans. Now his plans were, "OK, we're going to take over this prison and then we're going to take over the prison where the soldiers are and then we're going to take over Pretoria and we're going to capture the president and then we're going to end the war."
And nobody would listen to him. And he heard these two guys, one of which was Aylmer Haldane, his friend who had been the commander of the armored train and another guy named Brockie who was very savvy. He spoke Zulu. He spoke Afrikaans. He knew the area really well and he heard them plotting a very simple escape, just making it over the -- when the lights would come on at night, they were newly electric lights, there was one corner of the wall that was dark and they knew if just at the right moment, if you timed it right, if a guard had turned his back, you could quickly get over the wall. And Churchill tells him that he wants in on the plan.
And neither of them want to take him. He's too talkative. He's going to tell everybody. He's too famous and he's not strong enough. He's going to be a burden the whole way. And so they tell him they don't want him to go, but Haldane who had invited him on the train feels guilty and says, "Look, just so you know we don't want you to come with us, but I'll leave it up to you." And Churchill said, "I'm coming." And he actually makes it over the wall and they don't. He leaves them behind.
LAMB: Pretoria is where?
MILLARD: So Pretoria, as you saw on that map, it's farther north. So it's farther -- it's up more from where we saw Ladysmith. So it's father north in South Africa, but it's still --- I mean it's 500 miles north of what was then Cape Colony, British Cape Colony, so it's very far from there. To the west and the north, it's highly, highly protected by the Boers, so his only option was to go east into Portuguese East Africa, but it's almost 300 miles.
LAMB: So this territory we're looking at the old territory is under the sovereignty of what, is it British?
MILLARD: No. This is the Transvaal and that's the Boers, so it's all enemy territory.
LAMB: How did they get that territory?
MILLARD: So they had it -- well they took it from the native Africans over a century. So in 1833, the British abolished slavery and that was kind of the breaking point for the Boers who had always wanted their independence anyway. So they went on what they called The Great Trek and they travelled hundreds of miles into the African interior and they established three different republics. So the most important of which was the Transvaal and that's where Pretoria is and that was -- that was their capital.
LAMB: So he escaped from the prison and what happened to make him a hero and why was he -- why did -- how did people know about it?
MILLARD: So everybody knew. So even though you think oh, he's just this 24-year old guy, but he was the son of Lord Randolph Churchill and Randolph Churchill had actually been in South Africa just a few years earlier and had -- and was hated by the Boers because he wrote all these letters back that were published in British newspapers excoriating the Boers for everything, but mostly for their treatment of native Africans.
And so when they captured Winston Churchill, it was fantastic. They were thrilled because it's a son of a lord, it's a son of this hated man and he sort of represented everything that they despised about the British Empire. And so then when he escapes, they are humiliated and enraged and they are searching everywhere to find him and recapture him, or there is a very real risk that they will kill him when they find him.
LAMB: Who is John Howard?
MILLARD: So this is one of these moments where this is just incredible instance of luck. So most, when the Boer War begun, the Boers forced out most of the -- of the Britons who were living in the area at that time, they only kept a few people and those are people who were essential to them. John Howard was running a colliery, a very important colliery in the Transvaal.
LAMB: What's a colliery?
MILLARD: So it's where we have the coal mines, so they're bringing up coal that obviously is running the country and running the war. And so Churchill when he's alone and he's scared and he has nothing. So his co-conspirators are still in prison. They have the map, the compass, the food, the weapon, the plan, he doesn't speak the language, he has nothing and he's just, at every moment, thinking he's going to be captured.
And he's desperate. And he sees in the distance these fires and at first he thinks that is an African village and he thinks he'll go there and ask for help because he thinks the Africans hate the Boers even more than the British do, so maybe, you know, I can get them to lend me a guide and a horse. But he gets closer and he realizes that these are the fires from this colliery.
And he stops and he realizes that he's taking an incredible chance because all he's been doing is hiding. And he's going to step out of the gloom and he thinks I have to, you know. There's no other way about it.
So he comes up with this crazy story and he knocks on this first door that he comes to and John Howard opens the door and he starts to tell him, "Oh, you know, I'm a Boer and I fell off the train and I hurt my shoulder, can you help me," and all the while he's thinking, you know, I don't speak Dutch, I don't speak Afrikaans, how am I going to pull this off?
And John Howard just looks at him and he says, "You know, I think you should come inside." So he leads him in, he takes him to a room and he puts a gun on the table, John Howard does and Churchill realizes that he's had this gun the whole time and he turns around and he locks the door. And Churchill thinks, you know, this is not going well for me. And he says -- I think Churchill says, "I think I should tell you the truth." And John Howard says, "Yes, I think you'd better."
And he says, you know, "I'm Winston Churchill and I've escaped." And he reaches out his hand and he shakes it and he said, "I'm English. I'm going to help you." And Churchill said that it felt like a drowning man was being pulled out of the water.
LAMB: There's a lot more to the story after all this. How did -- what did you trust in this when you were going to your primary source? Did Winston Churchill write about this and what makes you think he was telling the truth given the fact that he wanted glory?
MILLARD: He did write about it and you can -- you know, he wrote it in articles for the -- for the Morning Post. He wrote a book about this experience. He also talks a lot about it in his fantastic autobiography called My Early Life which is about from his childhood up to 1900 and it's absolutely fascinating.
But it wasn't just his word. I mean John Howard, the man who helped him wrote about it, this other man who ends up sort of helping him get out over to Portuguese East Africa by hiding him in his wool cars in a train, he wrote about it as well. And both -- in small things like he did an interview in a South African newspaper that I found. He wrote a letter to Churchill, both of them dead, so I have those sources as well.
And then you know, the men who were with him in the prison, so all of these things collaborate what Churchill is saying.
LAMB: For you though, all the traveling you did and the places you went in South Africa and in Great Britain a lot, what was the most important?
MILLARD: Well to me standing on the South African Veld and understanding what Churchill was feeling because again, when we think of Winston Churchill, he almost seems like, you know, a different species. He's this incredibly famous man, you know, absolutely far from a perfect man, but one of the greatest leaders in the history of the world and so he felt so removed.
But standing there, you can understand his desperation and the sense of vulnerability. And at one point while he is travelling and, you know, he wasn't a religious man, but he finally prays. He prays for guidance and for help because he has nowhere else to turn, and that's something that, I think, anybody can understand and there's just this shared humanity that we have.
LAMB: You said the South African Veld, spelled V-E-L-D, what is it?
MILLARD: So it's the terrain of the South Africa, so it's a very low, flat, scrubby terrain and there's just not much there. And it was, you know, living in Kansas it kind of reminds me of Kansas horizon that just goes on and on forever.
LAMB: We're about out of time, you have those three kids, boys, girls?
MILLARD: I have two girls and a little boy.
LAMB: Do they read your books?
MILLARD: My oldest does, my 14th year old, yes. She's read the first two and she says she wants to read this since she's very interested in history, so.
LAMB: Say your husband got you -- told you first that you were a good writer. Does he get involved in these books?
MILLARD: No, he comes with me when I go to do research which is really fun for me and also it's great because he was a war correspondent. So especially when I was going into South America for my first book and there are a few dodgy situations, it's nice to have him with me.
LAMB: So do you want to tell us who you're thinking about writing about next?
MILLARD: You know, to be honest, I don't know. I have three possibilities, but I have a lot of work to do before I know if any of them are going to work.
LAMB: First book on Teddy Roosevelt, second on James Garfield, third Winston Churchill. Here is the cover of the book, Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape and the making of Winston Churchill, our guest has been Candice Millard of near Kansas City, Kansas. Thank you very much.
MILLARD: Thank you. Thank you for having me.