Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape.The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead.Harbor Springs Festival of the Book Begins Today.Saturday at Harbor Springs Festival of the Book.Telling of his capture, escape, and journey to freedom would make quite a story, but that’s just the beginning as Churchill returned to London, enlisted, and set off again for South Africa to liberate the men with whom he’d been captured and who were still imprisoned. He later managed a harrowing escape only to find himself alone in enemy territory with almost no resources to aid in traveling the hundreds of miles to safety. Churchill set off as a journalist with his valet and crates of vintage wine to cover the brutal war, but just two weeks after his arrival, he was taken prisoner along with the soldiers he was following and aiding.

“The greatest threat was from the burden of ruling its own colonies.” After a century of conflict with the Boers (Dutch settlers) and new concerns about control of gold mines, the war began when the British rejected an ultimatum to withdraw troops from the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. Millard notes that in 1899 the British Empire covered more than a fifth of the world’s land surface and ruled about a quarter of the human race – “more than 450 million people on every continent and on the islands of every ocean.” It was the largest empire ever known.

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