Winston Churchill's Stepping Stones to Greatness

SANTA FE, NM, September 16, 2010 (Press-News.org) Winston Churchill had been on the run for two nights. It was the Second Boer (South African) War in 1899. The 25-year-old war correspondent had just escaped from a prison camp in Pretoria by climbing over a wall and running.

He was thirsty, hungry and tired. Churchill could see lights up ahead and headed for the nearby house. A man answered the door pointing a pistol at Churchill thinking he was a Boer spy.

Churchill was lucky. The man, John Howard, was an Englishman. He hid Churchill for three days in a nearby mine before smuggling him onto a railway wagon headed for Portuguese East Africa and freedom.

Churchill worked as a reporter for the London Morning Post. His publicized adventures were making him famous in England and he wasted little effort this time letting the press know he was ok.

When he arrived by ship at Durban in South Africa two days before Christmas in 1899 crowds jammed the harbor to catch a glimpse of the hero. He was a celebrity at age 25 and achieved it first, not as a soldier, but as a war correspondent.

On June 2, Christie's, London, featured the Winston Spencer Churchill collection of Malcolm S. Forbes Jr., Part 1 on the block. Featured in the sale was a bust-length image of Churchill in his uniform as a lieutenant in the South African Light Horse, early-1900. Mounted on cardboard and signed, the photo sold for $7,355.

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