W Beach (Lancashire Landing) at Cape Helles, Gallipoli, 7 January 1916, just prior to the final evacuation of British forces during the Battle of Gallipoli The explosion of a Turkish shell...

Churchill hunting on horseback copyright: Churchill Archives Centre, Broadwater Collection...

Hunting wild boar at Foucarmont, 1927 copyright: Churchill Archives Centre, Broadwater Collection...

Churchill with a 188 pound marlin caught on 22 September 1929 off Catalina Island, California, while fishing on the yacht of his host, William Randolph Hearst during his tour of the...

Churchill emerging from a swim in the sea, wrapped in towels copyright: Churchill Archives Centre, Broadwater Collection...

Churchill after his escape during the Boer War, 1900 copyright: Churchil Archives Centre, Baroness Spencer Churchill Collection...

On his arrival in Durban in December 1899, Churchill was hailed a war hero. His new fame allowed him to override the objections of the War Office and he continued to assume the dual role of officer – with a local volunteer unit, the South African Light Horse – and war correspondent. For the next six months, he encountered fire, took part in the bloody and unsuccessful battle of Spion Kop in January 1900 and, as the war turned in Britain’s favour, was present at the relief of Ladysmith and the occupation of Pretoria. Returning to England in July 1900, Churchill was feted on the streets of Oldham. Having been defeated there in the by-election of 1899, he now prepared to contest the seat again as a celebrity. Now a well-known and celebrated figure, he won a seat in the next election and was elected to the House of Commons, for the Conservatives, in October 1900 just before his twenty-sixth birthday. Victory was followed by a speaking tour of the United Kingdom and North America. Although he was of course to return to the front lines of war in later life, his youthful career as a soldier was over.

In his last youthful military adventure, Churchill joined British forces in the Boer War. Churchill set off, armed with the important things in life – sixty bottles of spirits, twelve bottles of Rose’s Lime Juice and a supply of claret – and arrived in Cape Town late on 30 October 1899. He was famously captured only two weeks later by the Boers, when the armoured train on which he was travelling in Boer-occupied territory was ambushed and derailed. He made a dramatic escape the following month, making his way to Durban, with the Boers offering a reward of £25 for the recapture of their well-known prisoner, ‘dead or alive’. His dispatches from the Boer War were republished as two books, (1900) and (1900).

With all his writing and journalism gaining the attention of the political authorities (due in no small part to promotion of his activities by his mother Lady Randolph), he resigned from the army in April 1899. Politics beckoned. He had already spoken at a few political meetings in the Autumn of 1898 and attempted to enter Parliament as a Conservative, but failed – by a small margin – at the by-election in Oldham in 1899. But more action was to beckon. A serious colonial war had begun in South Africa and Churchill managed to secure another lucrative assignment to report on the war for the . The contract he negotiated with the newspaper, a salary of £250 a month and all expenses paid, made him the highest-paid war correspondent of the day.