Martin Wainwright: On the sale of the Iranian captives' stories (Churchill did it)
Just as a coda to the great scrap about our lads and lass in Iran and their right, or not, to sell their story of captivity, let's remember the record in this field of one of history's most celebrated Englishmen.
Scarcely had young Winston Churchill got his uniform off after the Malakand campaign on the North West Frontier of India in 1897 than he was dashing off a book about it, The Malakand Field Force, and not for free either. His publisher paid him £600, which is £46,795.62 at today's values.
It wasn't anodyne stuff, and nor was his next piece of instant history, two volumes called The River War. These were published within a year of the young subaltern's secondment to the 21st Lancer's during Lord Kitchener's punitive expedition to the Sudan in 1898 following the death of General Gordon. It contains a justly famous passage about the last real cavalry charge by British forces, at the Battle of Omdurman, but there was plenty in it which made top brass livid at the time.
Kitchener hadn't wanted a young adventurer with a famous name (son of a former Tory cabinet minister) in his army. Churchill outsmarted him and wrote about that too. In The Malakand Field Force he also had lots of things to say about newly mechanised methods of fighting which certain people in Berlin or Vienna would have found interesting.
His urge to tell the story (and be paid for it, because he needed an income to support his classy background) over-rode such considerations. And it had started even earlier. While trying to root out Pathans on the North-West Frontier, he was simultaneously describing the blood and guts for the Daily Telegraph at £5 a column (£389.96 today).
Maybe it was the blood and guts which kept public opinion on his side. There was nothing very surrender-minded about young Winston (and his commander was in the same mould, down to his alarming name of Sir Bindon Blood). After seeing a colleague cut down in ambush, Churchill wrote of the tribesman responsible: "I forgot everything else at this moment except a desire to kill this man". The excitement of his passage about Omdurman is physical, even after all these years.
Goodness, he was a prisoner of war too, in the Boer campaign, which saw Britain flailing about in Mr Bean-like mode. Naturally he wrote about that immediately too. The lines were a little more blurred because he was an official war correspondent, but he was a soldier as well. He had enlisted as a volunteer and after escaping he took a commission in the South African Light Horse Regiment and rode with Sir Redvers Buller to relieve Ladysmith. More war, more writing. He doubled as correspondent for the London press and published not one but two books the following year.
I am not sure how this little history lesson bears on the present controversy, partly because I can't make up my own mind about the pros and cons of Faye Turney and co. But Churchill later made one assertion which is undoubtedly true: "History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it."
Read entire article at Guardian
Scarcely had young Winston Churchill got his uniform off after the Malakand campaign on the North West Frontier of India in 1897 than he was dashing off a book about it, The Malakand Field Force, and not for free either. His publisher paid him £600, which is £46,795.62 at today's values.
It wasn't anodyne stuff, and nor was his next piece of instant history, two volumes called The River War. These were published within a year of the young subaltern's secondment to the 21st Lancer's during Lord Kitchener's punitive expedition to the Sudan in 1898 following the death of General Gordon. It contains a justly famous passage about the last real cavalry charge by British forces, at the Battle of Omdurman, but there was plenty in it which made top brass livid at the time.
Kitchener hadn't wanted a young adventurer with a famous name (son of a former Tory cabinet minister) in his army. Churchill outsmarted him and wrote about that too. In The Malakand Field Force he also had lots of things to say about newly mechanised methods of fighting which certain people in Berlin or Vienna would have found interesting.
His urge to tell the story (and be paid for it, because he needed an income to support his classy background) over-rode such considerations. And it had started even earlier. While trying to root out Pathans on the North-West Frontier, he was simultaneously describing the blood and guts for the Daily Telegraph at £5 a column (£389.96 today).
Maybe it was the blood and guts which kept public opinion on his side. There was nothing very surrender-minded about young Winston (and his commander was in the same mould, down to his alarming name of Sir Bindon Blood). After seeing a colleague cut down in ambush, Churchill wrote of the tribesman responsible: "I forgot everything else at this moment except a desire to kill this man". The excitement of his passage about Omdurman is physical, even after all these years.
Goodness, he was a prisoner of war too, in the Boer campaign, which saw Britain flailing about in Mr Bean-like mode. Naturally he wrote about that immediately too. The lines were a little more blurred because he was an official war correspondent, but he was a soldier as well. He had enlisted as a volunteer and after escaping he took a commission in the South African Light Horse Regiment and rode with Sir Redvers Buller to relieve Ladysmith. More war, more writing. He doubled as correspondent for the London press and published not one but two books the following year.
I am not sure how this little history lesson bears on the present controversy, partly because I can't make up my own mind about the pros and cons of Faye Turney and co. But Churchill later made one assertion which is undoubtedly true: "History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it."