259: Young Winston with Furman Daniel

00:02:15:15 – 00:02:25:27
Dan LeFebvre
Before we dive into some of the details of the movie, Young Winston, if you were to give it an overall letter grade for its historical accuracy.

00:02:25:29 – 00:02:52:18
Furman Daniel
Dan, that’s a great question. And unfortunately, it’s a very hard one to answer because our main source for a lot of these episodes, a lot of these instances is Winston Churchill himself. So our source material is biased and probably historically inaccurate to start with. I would. So I’m going to have to give it to grades. And I hate to pass on your very first very good question.

00:02:52:20 – 00:03:23:08
Furman Daniel
I would give it an A or an A-plus for how would Churchill like to be seen and what is the kind of myth and the man in the legend that Winston Churchill wanted to kind of put out there to the world? It does a really good job of using the source material from Churchill’s writings and making that into an entertaining and generally sticking to the source material that Churchill provides this movie in terms of history, it’s a little more of an incomplete.

00:03:23:11 – 00:03:44:01
Furman Daniel
It’s a little more of an I don’t know type thing, because like I mentioned before, Churchill wrote the history for for so much of this. And we kind of have to take his word for it. I will tell you, as as a historian, as a biographer. Churchill loves to exaggerate. Churchill loves to make himself the center of every large historical event.

00:03:44:03 – 00:04:10:14
Furman Daniel
And because of that, we got to be very careful with what Churchill says. And unfortunately for a lot of these small episodes, you know, with his family and at school, he’s really early source. So as a reflection of how Churchill wanted to be thought of as a plus, as a actual historiographical kind of thing, incomplete or maybe a B-minus, I really don’t know.

00:04:10:16 – 00:04:27:03
Dan LeFebvre
Well, that’s I mean, you say it’s punting the question. I don’t think so, because I think even as we started digging some of these details that we see, it’s great to keep that in mind, that we have to take take it with a grain of salt. I mean, it’s not going to be something that we know for a fact.

00:04:27:03 – 00:04:33:14
Dan LeFebvre
This is what happened. This might be what he said happened. But if he likes to exaggerate.

00:04:33:17 – 00:04:50:29
Furman Daniel
Yeah. And Churchill is generally truthful. And I think his works do a good job of reflecting. At least Albee saw himself or how he wanted to be remembered. But yeah, we have to kind of trust him on some of this, and that’s challenging.

00:04:51:01 – 00:05:16:01
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I guess until it makes sense from another perspective, as such, we’re talking about young Winston. It’s in the title. You know, Winston’s early. Winston Churchill’s earlier years. You know, at the time he didn’t know what he’s going to be. It’s not like people go around, have biographers, you know, documenting everything that everybody does. I mean, if somebody would do the same for my life or somebody else’s life, like a lot of that would be I’d be the only source for that.

00:05:16:01 – 00:05:52:27
Furman Daniel
Absolutely. And it’s also worth noting that much of this material that the movie is based on, he wrote in the late 1920s, early 1930s in a period of his life where actually his career was stalled and he was writing this partly to make money, partly, but partly also to kind of reintroduce the British public to the celebrity and the kind of larger than life Churchill, with an attempt to make money, but also kind of kickstart his career and remind the British public that he was a great hero and could be a gift.

00:05:52:29 – 00:06:12:10
Dan LeFebvre
That that’s all very good. You know, so if we go back into the movie and kind of throughout the entire movie, we get some narration from an adult, Winston Churchill, as he talks about his early life. And from that voiceover, we find out that at age seven, Winston was, as he says, you know, cast out of his happy home to go to school.

00:06:12:12 – 00:06:30:26
Dan LeFebvre
And the school seems to be a pretty strict one, too, that we see in the movie. There’s spankings for children who disobey a seven year old. Winston seems to enjoy it there, although he keeps writing letters back home, wishing that his parents would visit. Is that a good representation of what Winston’s early school years were like?

00:06:30:28 – 00:07:03:00
Furman Daniel
So this was a very common experience for the period for schools to be very strict and very kind of used to using corporal punishment are using embarrassment as a as a teaching tool and things like that. And I think Churchill was a was a fairly sensitive person. And ah, some of that was very, very, very difficult for him, particularly at his first school, where the headmaster was very quick to use physical punishment for even minor infractions of the rules.

00:07:03:02 – 00:07:28:23
Furman Daniel
I think Churchill was generally unhappy at school because he struggled academically and he missed his parents and he missed the kind of easy, comfortable life that the voiceover talks about. It also didn’t help Churchill that he struggled with Latimer. He struggled with many of the subjects other than history, and he felt like a failure. And even as a young child, he saw himself as somebody important.

00:07:28:23 – 00:07:53:04
Furman Daniel
He saw himself as somebody different and special. And to be forced to fail and fail repeatedly and to have embarrassment, be a teaching tool was something that that was very shocking to it, to a young boy and is also shocking to us. You know. More than 100 years later, seeing this as a school experience. But it was it was actually very common at the time, very harsh discipline and embarrassment as a teaching tool.

00:07:53:10 – 00:08:00:13
Furman Daniel
Loneliness is a very common theme for boarding school people at that time and as well as now.

00:08:00:16 – 00:08:13:21
Dan LeFebvre
You mentioned the wishing missing his parents. So then the movie kind of mentions this is as I said, though, you kept writing letters back wishing that they would visit. So would the movie be correct to suggest that he never really got to see his parents while he was at school?

00:08:13:26 – 00:08:40:29
Furman Daniel
He saw his parents very rarely during the school term, and again, that was common for the time, parents were not nearly as kind of accommodating to their children, that the idea of spending quality time with your kids, with telling them you loved them, with visiting room is much more of a modern kind of way to parent. It’s again shocking to us, but was would have been equally shocking.

00:08:40:29 – 00:09:06:09
Furman Daniel
The way we parent them. So it is fair. He wrote many, many letters and his parents, for various reasons, wrote very few back. And when they did write back, his parents often were saying, well, we’re not going to come. His parents were busy. They were they were celebrities. But they were also reflecting the kind of mores and values of the time, which is when the kids are off at school.

00:09:06:09 – 00:09:09:13
Furman Daniel
You leave them at school and and you don’t come visit.

00:09:09:16 – 00:09:13:23
Dan LeFebvre
It’s a different it’s different than what we’re used to, for sure now.

00:09:13:25 – 00:09:38:03
Furman Daniel
It’s it’s unimaginable now. But again, are at the time that that’s how you parent it. And particularly of the upper class because you know the upper class was busy and upper class had important things to do. So Churchill’s mom was socializing and kind of making a name for themselves and being part of the party scene. Churchill’s dad was a was a very important politician.

00:09:38:05 – 00:09:46:27
Furman Daniel
And the idea of I’m going to stop dad to go visit a small child, just unimaginable to them at least.

00:09:46:29 – 00:10:07:28
Dan LeFebvre
You mentioned his dad being a politician. According to the movie, we see his father, Lord Randolph, resigning from parliament over a bill about the budgets for the British army and Navy. He sees it as a misuse of public funds. So he sends his letter of resignation to the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, and simultaneously he publishes it in The Times newspaper.

00:10:08:01 – 00:10:12:13
Dan LeFebvre
Is that how and why Lord Randolph Churchill resigned from Parliament?

00:10:12:16 – 00:10:43:01
Furman Daniel
That’s a pretty good overview of Lord Randolph’s resignation from being Chancellor of the Exchequer. He kept his seat in Parliament, but this effectively ended his career. He tried to kind of use this issue of the Army Navy budget to force the government to either accommodate him or vault himself to a higher office, bring down the government, and then replace them with himself when this kind of gambit failed.

00:10:43:04 – 00:11:05:21
Furman Daniel
He was left without an office and kind of as a national laughingstock, as someone that was seen as a wild card, an embarrassment, somebody who could not be trusted because he went and betrayed the party, leaked, leaked his speech to the press and then had no plan whatsoever when this failed to actually reconcile with the government or to actually govern and lead.

00:11:05:29 – 00:11:08:23
Furman Daniel
So that effectively ended his career.

00:11:08:25 – 00:11:18:02
Dan LeFebvre
He was expecting it almost, you said overturn the government like he was expecting it. Obviously, he didn’t want to ruin his career, I’m guessing as a politician or his goals with that.

00:11:18:09 – 00:11:48:18
Furman Daniel
Yeah, his goals were to basically incite a crisis over the budget because parliament had to pass a budget. If you insight a crisis over that kind of like the budget showdown we’re having now. He thought he could make himself the kind of kingmaker for parliament and perhaps even become prime minister himself. You know, engineer a crisis, take advantage of it, be the hero and vault to the top of politics was for idea.

00:11:48:23 – 00:12:15:05
Furman Daniel
The movie has to, you know, it’s an incredibly complex political issue that’s really hard to understand, you know, as an American and in over 100 years after the fact. But the movie actually does a pretty good job of at least showing that Randolph thought he could, you know, use this this crisis to promote his own career. And then how it spectacularly backfired and, in effect, ruined his career.

00:12:15:08 – 00:12:46:04
Dan LeFebvre
One of the scenes in the movie shows a seems like it’s a rather simple conversation between Winston and his father, just kind of a random morning. His dad blows up at him over breakfast, and then they have this conversation and the conversation itself, as I was watching it in the movie, it didn’t really seem to be that special, but the movie still made a big deal out of it because we can hear, again, adult Winston’s voiceover saying that it was one of a very few conversations, one of very few long conversations that he had with his father.

00:12:46:06 – 00:13:06:22
Dan LeFebvre
And then later in the movie, there’s another scene when Winston is telling his dad how happy he is that he got into Sandhurst. But his dad goes on to say that Winston is the greatest disappointment and he doesn’t even really seem to know how old Winston is. He said he’s not a boy anymore. He’s almost 21. And Winston’s like, I’m 19, corrects him there.

00:13:06:27 – 00:13:29:04
Dan LeFebvre
So with the moments like these, I kind of walk away from the movie with the impression that Winston and his father’s relationship seemed to be very one sided. Winston was always striving for his father’s approval, but his father never seemed to think that anything Winston did was good enough. How well did the movie do painting that picture of Winston and his father’s relationship.

00:13:29:06 – 00:13:54:24
Furman Daniel
In terms of this relationship? We have to take Winston Churchill’s word for it, but I think the movie does a pretty good job of painting that relationship, at least how Churchill saw it. And the quote about this is one of the few long conversations I ever remember having with my father is taken directly from Churchill’s writings. So the movie does a great job of at least including Churchill’s historical writings on that.

00:13:54:27 – 00:14:17:02
Furman Daniel
And again, I think your description of it and the movie’s kind of recounting of it in just a few minutes of movie time to take a very complex relationship that that dozens of books have been written about and condensing it down into a couple of movies, I think it actually does a pretty good job of at least showing this, you know, exalted father figure.

00:14:17:02 – 00:14:37:27
Furman Daniel
This this child who who feels that he can never live up to the image of his father and that kind of wants to build a career to impress his father, to win his love and affection. I think that’s certainly how Churchill portrayed that relationship. And I think the movie does a very good job of including that in there.

00:14:38:00 – 00:14:53:26
Dan LeFebvre
Harkens back to what he started off with of and this is all from Winston’s perspective. Do we know anything from Lord Randolph’s perspective? I mean, did he you said he didn’t really write back to Winston. Did he write about Winston at all?

00:14:54:03 – 00:15:22:15
Furman Daniel
So there’s a very few letters from Randolph to Winston that survive. And most of them, kind of like the movie, are actually very critical of Churchill, you know, pointing out his failures in school, pointing out that as a cavalry officer, he would he would take more money to have a horse and a uniform and things like that. So the documentary record, we do have these letters from Randolph to to Winston generally support that.

00:15:22:15 – 00:15:33:01
Furman Daniel
And the fact that there’s not a lot of them and many of them are very critical supports this this narrative that Churchill and the movie portray.

00:15:33:03 – 00:15:37:17
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, it makes sense. I mean, you would think there would be more if it wasn’t the case.

00:15:37:19 – 00:15:58:16
Furman Daniel
Yeah. It or even if you found dozens of of flowery letters saying how much I love you, son, and I believe in you and I want you to be successful and and I will help you, then it might, you know, make you doubt the narrative that Churchill puts out. But lack of evidence does not mean evidence. But in this case, the evidence we do have supports that narrative pretty well.

00:15:58:18 – 00:16:20:18
Dan LeFebvre
Though If we go back into the movie, we see Lord Randolph giving a speech in Parliament where he keeps forgetting what he’s talking about. Then we hear an adult Winston voice over again. He mentions that his father died at age 46, and with all of Winston’s dreams of comradeship and entering the parliament at his side, kind of dying along with him.

00:16:20:21 – 00:16:29:05
Dan LeFebvre
How long how well did the movie portray the way that his father’s death affected Winston?

00:16:29:07 – 00:16:55:27
Furman Daniel
I think the movie, again, the movie’s trying to do so many things. It’s such a even with almost 3 hours of screen time, it’s trying to to wrap so many things together. But I think it does a pretty good job here. Lord Randolph, Probably. And I want to say probably it’s not been definitively who probably was suffering from syphilis, which affected his brain in the movie talks about this.

00:16:55:29 – 00:17:21:22
Furman Daniel
He probably had it for at least the last ten years of his life. And it created this kind of physical and mental decline that the movie shows The contemporary accounts of Randolph’s speeches when he was a younger man were glowing, right? Even even his enemies stopped to hear him speak. And by the end, he was this shell of a man who could barely speak, who could barely move.

00:17:21:25 – 00:17:47:24
Furman Daniel
Churchill talked about how he died in public slowly. And I think the movie does a good job of showing him dying little by little. This this great man, this this eloquent speaker dying slowly, but a very kind of a public death where, you know, everybody gets to see this person and that affected Churchill greatly.

00:17:47:26 – 00:18:09:12
Dan LeFebvre
That brings up another part that we do see in the movie where they don’t mention his name, but there’s like an interviewer after Lord Randolph’s death and he’s chatting with his widow, Jenny, in the movie and kind of suggests that their marriage was merely a formality. He implies that that she was having an affair with the Prince of Wales or Charles Kinski.

00:18:09:14 – 00:18:19:23
Dan LeFebvre
I mean, she denies all of this. But would it be would kind of be true then that there were these rumors floating around about the marriage between Lord and Lady Randolph Churchill?

00:18:19:25 – 00:18:49:23
Furman Daniel
Yes. So again, and I want to be very careful here. The people that have specifically tried to look at this question, the biographers and historians, and have it’s pretty clear that both Lord Randolph and Lady Churchill led a fairly active kind of romantic lives with other folks. In Randolph’s case, probably both a mixture of prostitutes and members of the British kind of political society.

00:18:49:25 – 00:19:28:06
Furman Daniel
And then in Lady Churchill’s case, with upper class members of British society. It’s also worth noting she was seen as quite a beauty and quite a vivacious, personal 80. And she was married to other times. Actually, after Randolph’s death, Churchill actually didn’t like either of the people she married afterwards, but she was very willing to kind of use her beauty, use her vivacious personality, used her social connections to advance her own interests, But also, especially after Randolph’s death advanced the interest of her son.

00:19:28:06 – 00:19:29:22
Furman Daniel
Once.

00:19:29:24 – 00:19:37:10
Dan LeFebvre
Like you say in the movie, is covering a lot of complex topics there, but it’s touching on some of the key plot points in their lives.

00:19:37:13 – 00:20:08:05
Furman Daniel
You know, it’s a movie from, you know, 50 years ago, and so it has the mores of 50 years ago trying to explain the mores of 120 years ago. It’s actually some some kind of uncomfortable scenes to watch. But I think that works in a way, because I think it would have been very uncomfortable for Churchill to understand, hey, both of my parents, who I really idolize, live, kind of adventurous and not particularly moral upstanding kind of sexual lives.

00:20:08:07 – 00:20:16:05
Furman Daniel
And so I think I think in a weird way, the awkwardness of the movie on some of those points kind of sort of works.

00:20:16:07 – 00:20:41:24
Dan LeFebvre
That is a great point. Yeah. You mentioned the movie being like 50 years old. And something else we see in the movie that you don’t really see in movies now is the intermission. Yeah. And then after the intermission in the movie, we see a now Lieutenant Winston Churchill involved in a battle, and he’s part of the 21st Lancers, something that the movie suggests he’s only able to join because of a soldier named Chapman dying.

00:20:41:26 – 00:21:04:14
Dan LeFebvre
And then there’s a battle between 60,000 dervish soldiers against a much smaller British force. And the British have artillery, though they seem to have a lot better technology, even though there’s not as many of them. So it’s a courting movie, an overwhelming British victory. And then we see Churchill participating in what the film says would end up being the last charge of the British cavalry ever.

00:21:04:16 – 00:21:22:03
Dan LeFebvre
And then later, Churchill says the British won because even though they had superior numbers as you just mentioned, there’s no match for modern military. Of course, modern for the time. How old is the movie do showing this battle that we see with Churchill and the 21st Lancers fighting pretty good?

00:21:22:03 – 00:21:54:07
Furman Daniel
And you mentioned something right off the bat. Churchill was not going to originally be included in the in the expedition incident. He used a combination of his mother’s political contacts and the fact that there was suddenly an opening through the the death of one of the members of the 21st Lancers to get attached to that, he actually upset the commanding officer of Kitchener, who had purposely said, you know, no, I’m not going to let you in here because you’re this kind of minor celebrity, you’re a medal hunter, things like that.

00:21:54:09 – 00:22:22:00
Furman Daniel
So it does a good job of quickly kind of bringing us up to speed on that. So then the battle of Omdurman, which you shows there is one of the most lopsided battles in history for the exact reasons you just highlighted, the Sudanese army, the dervish army, as it was called by the British, had antiquated old style muskets and spears, and they were bringing them up against modern field artillery and machine guns and repeating rifles.

00:22:22:02 – 00:22:54:03
Furman Daniel
And so you have very, very, very lopsided casualties as the very brave Dervish soldiers, as do the British, the ultimate favor, which is attacking headlong across an open field where the British can have fire raining down on them pretty much all side. It’s a it’s a really sad kind of thing because it’s so lopsided. There are some actions that Churchill participated in at the end where the the Dervish army was retreating and the British used their cavalry forces to pursue them.

00:22:54:06 – 00:23:13:15
Furman Daniel
And Churchill actually charged with sword and pistol. And it was a much fair fight. And actually about half of the British casualties were in these kind of follow on operations where they couldn’t bring their heavy artillery, they couldn’t bring a machine guns to the battle and actually had to fight on horseback doing these cavalry charges. Churchill was a part of that.

00:23:13:15 – 00:23:36:03
Furman Daniel
He actually talked about it later as being the most dangerous 2 minutes of his life. And it probably was was it the last cavalry charge in British history? Again, that’s kind of Churchill setting himself as the central player in all of world history. It almost certainly wasn’t. There were cavalry charges in World War One that we’ve talked about.

00:23:36:05 – 00:24:07:08
Furman Daniel
Some people have even said, you know, British special forces in Afghanistan just in the last couple of decades have charged on horses. And that’s a cavalry charge, if you will. So, yeah, the movie does a pretty good job of of Churchill was not supposed to be on this expedition. The main battle was very lopsided. It after the main part of the battle was over, there was this anachronistic and very bloody, very dangerous cavalry charge, which Churchill behaved very bravely in.

00:24:07:10 – 00:24:28:26
Furman Daniel
And then kind of Churchill uses this to again propel himself to the celebrity that he wanted to be. And kind of, after the fact, write himself into the history as I led the last cavalry charge in British history. It’s great. It’s not 100% true. But again, how Churchill wanted to be seen does a fantastic job of that.

00:24:28:28 – 00:24:31:25
Dan LeFebvre
It makes for a good headline, especially if you’re going to get into politics.

00:24:31:27 – 00:24:34:06
Furman Daniel
Yeah, I wouldn’t like.

00:24:34:08 – 00:24:45:25
Dan LeFebvre
What sort of time period was that because it’s fascinating to me that technology differences between the what the British have, but they’re still using cavalry. And then, you know what the Sudanese army had late.

00:24:45:25 – 00:25:12:03
Furman Daniel
1800s and there was a famous ditty. So the British were some of the early adopters of what we now call a machine gun. They called it the maxim gun at the time after the inventor, Hiram Maxim, So looks like a modern machine gun. And there was a ditty that kind of British soldiers would say with a bit of ironic humor, Thank the Lord that we have got the Maxim gun.

00:25:12:03 – 00:25:35:15
Furman Daniel
And they have not that military humor that’s well, you know, we’d be screwed if we didn’t have this right. The kind of underlying tension in military humor, but also the they don’t have it. We love our machines. It’s kind of a interesting ditty that brings together this odd thing where the British were early adopters of modern, what we would call machine guns.

00:25:35:17 – 00:26:03:05
Furman Daniel
And yet they were still fighting people, you know, with with weapons from centuries before. And the casualties reflect that the British army gets their own comeuppance, you know, fighting against machine guns, you know, a decade or two later when you’re fighting in the trenches of World War One. And unfortunately, you know, they have the same kind of experience of when you charge machine guns across open territory, you know, it doesn’t matter how brave you are, It doesn’t matter how strong you are.

00:26:03:08 – 00:26:17:21
Furman Daniel
It’s very, very difficult. You’re impossible to close with the enemy and an attack. So, yeah, it’s it’s an interesting kind of campaign because it’s so lopsided and a lot of that is bravery, but most of it’s actually technology.

00:26:17:23 – 00:26:37:13
Dan LeFebvre
In the movie, after the battle with the 21st Lancers, we see Churchill leaving the Army and then he tries to get elected to parliament. And the movie doesn’t show a lot of detail about this part, but it does show that he loses the election. And so instead he’s going to South Africa to write as a war correspondent about the Boer War.

00:26:37:15 – 00:26:43:12
Dan LeFebvre
Can you fill in some more historical context around Churchill’s first attempt at going into politics?

00:26:43:16 – 00:27:05:03
Furman Daniel
So his first attempt was very rushed. There was a short fuze, what the British would call a by election, first for two seats in Oldham. And this was what this was a very kind of mixed district in terms of whether it was Liberal or Tory. Right. In the United States, we call it a purple district. It’s not red is not blue with purple.

00:27:05:05 – 00:27:29:12
Furman Daniel
This was was this, you know, kind of a purple district to use a term that doesn’t really work. But our American listeners will understand. He joined late. He was young and he didn’t really have a message that was clear. Other than I belong here, I want to represent you and I have some of the best ideas from the Tory party and some of the best ideas from a Liberal Party.

00:27:29:14 – 00:27:52:27
Furman Daniel
And I’m going to represent you well and you should vote for me. That almost won. He lost a very, very, very close election in this kind of mixed district. In retrospect, that shouldn’t be too surprising. He, you know, didn’t have an, you know, a lot of time to campaign. He didn’t have a clear message because he was trying to have it both ways of being appealing to both sides.

00:27:52:29 – 00:28:15:18
Furman Daniel
And he was young, he was inexperienced, and he still kind of had to run against the political legacy of his father, which had again, he had crumbled before before the public ten years before. So he loses, he loses narrowly and then, like you said, goes back to the Boer War to kind of try to make money and again, rehabilitate his reputation.

00:28:15:20 – 00:28:19:19
Dan LeFebvre
Was part of the reason for him wanting to get into politics because of his father.

00:28:19:22 – 00:28:43:08
Furman Daniel
Yes. And he idolized his father like we were discussing earlier. And he just loved politics from the fact, you know, from the time he was a little boy. So, you know, it’s hard to separate out how much of this was his father’s influence versus how much was his own legitimate interest. But, you know, one of his earliest interests were kind of history in politics and the story of the British people.

00:28:43:10 – 00:28:45:26
Furman Daniel
And he saw this kind of as a natural career path for.

00:28:45:27 – 00:29:17:11
Dan LeFebvre
So at this point in the movie, it mentions that Churchill published another book called The River War, where he criticized General Kitchener’s, as you mentioned earlier, particularly focus on the treatment of the enemy wounded. And we saw earlier in the movie that he wrote another book that Kitchener hated, but the Prince of Wales loved that book. And then later in the movie, there’s another line of dialog where Churchill mentioned that he’s living off what he earns, and with his father’s gone, it’s supporting his mother and his younger brother.

00:29:17:11 – 00:29:40:18
Dan LeFebvre
Although I don’t even think we see his younger brother in the movie at all. But perhaps I’m reading a little bit between lines here because even the movie never mentions that. The impression that I got was that Churchill earned a living as a writer, so he decided to go to South Africa as a correspondent, not because he was giving up on politics after losing the first election, but almost like he just needed the money for that.

00:29:40:25 – 00:29:48:15
Dan LeFebvre
Maybe politics would come back later. Is that a fair interpretation of what happened or was he just completely giving up on that career at that point?

00:29:48:18 – 00:30:11:05
Furman Daniel
So writing was a way for Churchill to make money, and he made quite a bit of money over the course of his career. He made the equivalent of about $20 million in modern money for his writing. He was one of the best paid authors in Great Britain for about a 30, 40 year period. It’s actually amazing how much money he made writing.

00:30:11:07 – 00:30:44:24
Furman Daniel
Quite frankly, I’m jealous. But yes, out of necessity he had to write to make money and he was very well paid for that. He also saw writing as a way, kind of like we’ve mentioned before, of writing himself into history and telling his side of the story and building that type of celebrity, you know, myth of Winston Churchill that he wanted to tell you mention the book The River War that he wrote that was critical of Kitchener, and it really was.

00:30:44:26 – 00:31:23:24
Furman Daniel
But it was a bestselling book about the campaign against the dervishes in Sudan that made him quite a bit of money. Unfortunately, though, it did upset Kitchener because, like you mentioned, it mentions how Kitchener left Dervish wounded on the battlefields at Omdurman and was insensitive out of their cries for help. It also talks about how Kitchener, after the battle was over, went into Khartoum, the capital there, and turned his artillery pieces on the shrine of some of the Muslim fighters that he was fighting against the Mahdi, too.

00:31:23:27 – 00:31:50:27
Furman Daniel
These are what we would now think of as war crimes. And Kitchener was jealous of his reputation, too. He cared about how the public would think about him, too. And this was very, very upsetting for Kitchener. Interesting enough, the original drafts of Churchill’s work were actually even more critical of Kitchener, and some of his private letters and private comments were much more negative of Kitchener.

00:31:51:00 – 00:32:13:18
Furman Daniel
Churchill should have been perhaps a little more careful here because Kitchener was the his commanding officer. So it was somewhat insubordinate. But Kitchener was also the single biggest hero to come out of first the campaign in Sudan, then the campaign in South Africa. And then he was the head of the British military during the first couple of years of World War One.

00:32:13:21 – 00:32:27:26
Furman Daniel
So Churchill was using this writing to make a name for himself, to make a very old and provocative claim, but while at the same time creating a pretty powerful enemy and creating some some other problems for himself, there too.

00:32:27:28 – 00:32:44:25
Dan LeFebvre
He’s making a lot of money off of this. So that in and of itself, his motivation for for a lot of people. But there’s also if there’s war crimes going on, there’s the letting people know about these things that are that are happening. Do we know if he was doing it to make the money or was he letting or is it maybe a mixture of both?

00:32:44:28 – 00:33:25:16
Furman Daniel
Churchill had you know, Churchill was at his heart a romantic and an idealist. And so I think, yes, there’s always the power to make money. There’s always I want to tell an interesting story and get attention. And that I think Churchill, interestingly enough, felt sympathy for his enemy and felt that it was wrong to treat wounded or dead with disrespect and to it was wrong to turn artillery pieces on cultural shrines, even of people of a kind of a breakaway sect of Islam that he didn’t respect.

00:33:25:16 – 00:33:48:14
Furman Daniel
And didn’t follow. I think he thought that was wrong. And I then his again, his letters and some of his comments that did not get published as part of the book were much more critical on that point. And they’re much more directed at Kitchener and they’re much more idealistic and naive about, Oh, we are British and we should be better than this.

00:33:48:14 – 00:34:23:10
Furman Daniel
And this is the kind of nasty part of the British Empire, the nasty part of war, the nasty part of the modern world that makes me sad and makes me sick to my stomach. It’s odd to think of Churchill as a romantic in that way. It’s odd to think of Churchill as an idealist, but I think in this case that actually comes out that Churchill would saw the horrors of war and simultaneously kind of warped it, but but at the same time was repulsed by the nastier parts of it at the same time.

00:34:23:12 – 00:34:51:06
Dan LeFebvre
Do you think it’d be fair say and again, I’m going to be speculating here, but as part of that, you know, kind of being romanticizing that and realizing that this is something that’s wrong, Do you think that was part of his reason for wanting to get into politics or even more so than following in his father’s footsteps, like he’s recognizing that there’s something wrong here and this is the way to fix it?

00:34:51:09 – 00:35:15:18
Furman Daniel
Churchill always had a soft spot for kind of the underdogs. Now, part of that is he saw himself as an underdog, which is kind of a self-serving way to see yourself if you’re born wealthy to a rich and famous family, and give that all these types of opportunities like private school and blah, blah, blah. But he saw himself as an underdog, and I think he also saw himself as a champion of the underdog.

00:35:15:20 – 00:35:47:29
Furman Daniel
So like a lot of politicians who are idealistic or at least idealistic at some point in their life, yes, I think Churchill absolutely had that element to him in his character and that much of that bled over to his politics. He was certainly not a common man. He certainly was not a member of the working class. But I think he saw himself as as having an opportunity to, you know, lift them up, if you will.

00:35:48:01 – 00:36:07:08
Dan LeFebvre
In the movie while he’s in South Africa. We see Churchill’s a work correspondent there, and he’s following like some British soldiers under the command of someone named Captain Haldane. And then there’s an they’re on an armored train and it gets attacked by bombers when the train is derailed. Churchill helps clear the tracks enough for the engine to be freed.

00:36:07:10 – 00:36:22:16
Dan LeFebvre
So they pile the wounded on the engine and the healthy soldiers then run behind the engine. It covers it as they’re being shot from the other side. But the brakes go out, the engine, the brakes on the engine go out, I should say. And then there’s a downgrade in the train so the soldiers can’t keep up with them.

00:36:22:16 – 00:36:39:27
Dan LeFebvre
It’s kind of one of the things that it almost seems kind of circumstantial. I mean, I know there’s terrain and things like that. It can happen, but it’s like, you know, what else can go wrong? The brakes go out right is right when there happens to be, you know, the terrain there. So the soldiers are trying to keep up, but they can’t.

00:36:39:29 – 00:36:54:08
Dan LeFebvre
And then Churchill goes back to try to help the soldiers that were running along and then he gets captured. How well did the movie do showing how Churchill was captured during the Boer War?

00:36:54:10 – 00:37:17:18
Furman Daniel
Again, it has to simplify the shootout with the train and what he was doing down in South Africa a little bit. And it has to simplify his capture and his transfer to the prison and his escape. But overall, it is a pretty good job. I mean, I think the scriptwriters and the directors do a pretty good make a pretty good set of choices of what do we leave in, what do we leave out, and kind of keep that narrative moving.

00:37:17:18 – 00:37:47:15
Furman Daniel
I think it does a pretty good job and is generally consistent with with the historical evidence there as well, at least in the case of the train shootout and his capture. We don’t have to just take Churchill’s word. There was lots of eyewitnesses that attest to Churchill’s, the fact that he went above and beyond the he wasn’t even technically a combatant, and yet he kind of put himself in this position of danger when he did not have to.

00:37:47:18 – 00:38:02:11
Furman Daniel
It does a good job of making that an interesting scene with the train shootout, kind of almost a Wild West feel to certain parts of it. It does a good job of that. Quickly moving that along while telling the story in a pretty accurate way as well.

00:38:02:13 – 00:38:32:04
Dan LeFebvre
You mentioned the escape. And if we go back to the movie, we do see Winston Churchill escaping from where he’s being held by climbing out of a latrine and then hopping on to a train. And after a while he jumps from the train while it’s still moving and then wanders to a nearby house. And according the movie, as we’re watching, it just seems like he just approached the very first house that he saw and it just happens that the man inside, Mr. Howard, is a British man who says that he’s the only house for miles that wouldn’t have turned Churchill over.

00:38:32:06 – 00:38:52:29
Dan LeFebvre
So we see Mr. Howard and his colleague, Mr. Du Snap, Hyde Churchill, in their coal mine for three days and nights before coming up with the plan for Churchill to escape safely to the border. Then we see the plan, which basically seems to involve distracting people enough for Churchill to hide under a tarp on a train that then he uses to reach the border safely.

00:38:53:02 – 00:38:54:25
Dan LeFebvre
Was that really how Churchill escaped?

00:38:54:27 – 00:39:19:25
Furman Daniel
That’s about right. Three very minor things that the that part of the movie leaves out. So one is Churchill actually upset his fellow prisoners by escaping when he did. And the movie talks about how they didn’t want to include him in their escape plans. And it shows how he kind of went out on his own without the other people he was supposed to escape with.

00:39:19:27 – 00:39:49:26
Furman Daniel
It doesn’t actually highlight the fact this really upset his fellow prisoners. His fellow prisoners felt betrayed. This fits some of the anti Churchill narrative that he was this spoiled, selfish person who didn’t play by other people’s rules so that his fellow prisoners, while they covered for him and helped him escape by keeping guards distracted and not telling them the next day when they discovered him where they that they knew about this, they were not happy with that.

00:39:49:26 – 00:40:11:00
Furman Daniel
So it kind of conveniently leaves out the fact that Churchill upset his fellow prisoners. It also leaves out the fact that Churchill wandered in the middle of the night after jumping off one of the trains he watered in the middle of the night through the desert for quite a while, and he actually used the stars, the North Star, to help guide him through this kind of wasteland.

00:40:11:00 – 00:40:35:00
Furman Daniel
And in South Africa. And then it misses part of it kind of makes the scene where he’s crossing the border a little more dramatic. He actually does not emerge and jump out of the train and say, I’m Winston Bloody Churchill Firearms business Year. He doesn’t actually do that until he’s two stops into safety. Not immediately after the border when he does it in the film.

00:40:35:03 – 00:40:58:09
Furman Daniel
But, you know, I can understand for all those reasons, wandering in the desert inside is kind of a boring scene, upsetting your fellow prisoners. Yeah, you probably don’t want that. And then being two stops out rather than just across the border is less dramatic. But three very minor points. The larger thing is entirely true. And Churchill, you know, you mentioned it was so lucky to knock on the door.

00:40:58:09 – 00:41:20:28
Furman Daniel
He did in the middle of the night and Howard and the British crew at that coal mine, the house of the coal mine, were very, very brave to take him in and really did not have to and, you know, kind of let him hide in the coal mines. The other thing actually doesn’t talk about is when he was down in the coal mine for three days hiding while they kind of came up with a plan to sneak him out.

00:41:21:00 – 00:41:43:15
Furman Daniel
There were rats and he was terrified of rats. And the rats were eating his food and eating this candle. Said it was kind of this gross thing. And again, I can understand why the movie doesn’t want to lose a Disney movie. I’m sure they’d be talking rats and they’d be fast friends and up on the Escape. But given that they’re trying to be historically accurate, they left the rats out.

00:41:43:19 – 00:42:01:06
Dan LeFebvre
You mentioned the knocking on Mr. Howard’s door, and that was the part that it was Surely this. I mean, just picking a house seemingly at random. I was like, surely that’s something that they compressed or they changed or something. But it seems like I mean that’s just imagine how different history would be if he had picked a different house.

00:42:01:07 – 00:42:25:19
Furman Daniel
Yeah, it’s entirely true to and then it’s one of those funny things. I mean, in Churchill’s life we know now that he became, you know, the Winston Churchill of World War Two. Right. There are so many times in his life where little tiny coincidences like that, you know, fate could have gone either way. And he actually ended up okay in Churchill’s version of history.

00:42:25:19 – 00:42:46:25
Furman Daniel
That means that he had fate. That means he was destined to be this great person. As a historian, when I put on my hat, I say, Wow, that was lucky. Or while that was a random chance or, you know, I’m glad that worked out. But again, when you when you look at how Churchill wanted that to be viewed, he he he loves to talk about how it was his destiny to be saved.

00:42:46:26 – 00:43:15:14
Furman Daniel
He was part of this greater plan. And again, it fits up fits nicely with that theme. Keep returning to the outer talk of Churchill. Wanted to be seen a certain way and his writings and his kind of way of talking about himself created this narrative where Churchill is the essential person for this historical event and he’s saved so that he can be at the next historical event where he can do something important and be saved for the next historical event and on and on and on and on.

00:43:15:17 – 00:43:35:12
Furman Daniel
The movie does a pretty good job again of using that and building that. It could have been different here. It could have been different here. It could have been here. And if any one of those had them happened, you have a problem because Churchill’s dead or capture or not, the Winston Churchill that that we ultimately have.

00:43:35:14 – 00:43:52:10
Dan LeFebvre
You mentioned something. The movie left out, it being that he upset the other prisoners. And we don’t see this in the movie, but there is a little bit of dialog later that says that Churchill went back to help the other men escape from the prison that he was held in. Did he actually do that?

00:43:52:13 – 00:44:17:20
Furman Daniel
So he did. After escaping, he rejoined the Army and served in the military and was part of the British army and their push to liberate Pretoria, where he’d been hidden. It wasn’t like he was Rambo kicking down the gates and leading the prisoners out or anything like that. But, you know, he served he served honorably when he absolutely did not have to.

00:44:17:22 – 00:44:38:16
Furman Daniel
And he was part of a much larger British force that helped liberate those people. But, you know, that scene there, it talks about he helped liberate them, you know, as a little bit of creative license that Churchill himself used to kind of excuse himself while I joined in that did my part, rather than just leaving these guys behind.

00:44:38:19 – 00:44:58:26
Furman Daniel
I was part of that kind of political narrative that is that that all too convenient. Churchill at the center of history approach. But no, he did not. It was not like in an action movie. Whereas, you know, follow me guys kicks down before, you know, saved saves the day. But but he served honorably and he did his part.

00:44:58:26 – 00:45:03:07
Furman Daniel
And he certainly didn’t have to by that point in his career.

00:45:03:09 – 00:45:23:29
Dan LeFebvre
When we see Churchill on the train is taking him to safety. We hear some reports from Pretoria to Rome to London and New York. Everybody seems to be following the hunt. Churchill. So when he shows up later, at that point, he’s basically a celebrity already. Everybody was wondering where he was. And then, of course, he uses that to launch his political career.

00:45:24:01 – 00:45:29:15
Dan LeFebvre
This time, he wins the vote. Was that how Churchill ended up getting elected to parliament?

00:45:29:17 – 00:46:00:18
Furman Daniel
It’s a big part of it. And you’re exactly right. He became a celebrity and he became this kind of good news story in a period of that war for the for the British, where most of the fighting was not going for them. Right. And there was not a lot of good news stories. So this kind of you know, we have this member of the British press that got captured, acting bravely, was imprisoned, escaped right out from the noses of the war.

00:46:00:20 – 00:46:24:06
Furman Daniel
He became kind of it took on a life of its own. And the fact that he had kind of gone missing and there was all these reports, you know, it turned out many of them that be false about where he was, what he was doing was he worded, was he dead, Was he recapture it fueled this kind of myth of Churchill that it was more than happy to exploit by using it to run for office.

00:46:24:06 – 00:46:55:06
Furman Daniel
And he also used it. He wrote a couple of books about his experience in South Africa, and he made an enormous amount of money, the equivalent of about $1,000,000 in today’s money, doing a lecture tour in Great Britain, the United States and Canada, where he gave talks about his experience in South Africa and escaping. So he was very, very well paid for that and used that to fund his political career or fund his very lavish lifestyle of things like that.

00:46:55:11 – 00:47:09:00
Furman Daniel
But yeah, I think there’s a good case to be made that this kind of celebrity, this moment where where is Churchill? The world wonders, really set him up for success the remainder of his career.

00:47:09:02 – 00:47:15:06
Dan LeFebvre
He seems like somebody that would be really good at taking advantage of that, to make himself the center of that story for political purposes.

00:47:15:09 – 00:47:40:11
Furman Daniel
Yeah, you could not imagine somebody more willing to talk about right about you know, make it a part of his brand, if you will, as Winston Churchill. Winston Churchill. It really was about branding Winston Churchill. And he did just an amazing job at that. And it helped that he had real adventures and really, truly was a brave hero.

00:47:40:14 – 00:47:44:27
Furman Daniel
What he took that heroic stuff and then just sent it to the stratosphere.

00:47:45:00 – 00:48:00:18
Dan LeFebvre
Can you clarify the timeline some because you mentioned going back into the Army to help the prisoners. I would assume that would be before the political thing with the tour that you were talking about in that aspect. So it was escape from Prison and then rejoin the Army for a little bit longer and then.

00:48:00:20 – 00:48:02:00
Furman Daniel
That’s correct.

00:48:02:03 – 00:48:09:08
Dan LeFebvre
Okay. Okay. Well, then I can certainly see how you’re talking about, you know, the the other prisoners were not happy about it.

00:48:09:10 – 00:48:10:00
Furman Daniel
Mm hmm.

00:48:10:02 – 00:48:25:03
Dan LeFebvre
His escaping. And then by the time he’s getting into politics, he had already gone back and helped them. I could certainly see using that as a political tool of. Oh, well, what these, you know, the negative here. I went back and rectified that. I fix that. I helped them, that kind of thing.

00:48:25:07 – 00:48:51:08
Furman Daniel
Yeah. And the other part of that timeline is almost as soon as he’s free, he starts writing about it, partly to get paid, partly to get his version of the story out. But even while he’s serving in the Army, he is filing newspaper reports and writing the two volumes of Here’s the two books about South Africa that he ultimately published.

00:48:51:10 – 00:49:11:11
Furman Daniel
So he’s serving in the military while also acting as a journalist and a writer, which is kind of hard for for modern audiences to think about. He was also writing during this period as he wanted to get his book and his articles and his side of the story out quickly and get paid, of course.

00:49:11:13 – 00:49:20:28
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, I mean, it makes sense to I mean, if he’s an author and that’s what he’s been used to doing, is writing about these experiences, then you have an experience. I can understand writing about it.

00:49:21:03 – 00:49:40:25
Furman Daniel
One thing I just can’t imagine and people sometimes ask me, what was Churchill’s key to success? And there is no one single key to success. Well, one of the things I always come back to is just the amazing energy he had throughout his life. This kind of I am going to succeed and I am going to put all of my effort into doing this.

00:49:41:02 – 00:50:09:29
Furman Daniel
I cannot imagine serving in the military in a war zone and writing a book and writing articles and sending messages and letters to prominent, you know, publishers and politicians. Doing all of that at the same time is just amazing. I think it speaks to his desire to brand himself and to achieve fame or die trying. You know, an era, I think it’s it’s pretty amazing.

00:50:10:01 – 00:50:33:25
Dan LeFebvre
The culmination near the end of the movie depicts Churchill giving his first major speech in parliament and there is a lot of tension around the speech in the film, but I didn’t really feel like the movie did a good job of explaining why there was that tension other than to show that Churchill was taking on the military budget and economy and the same sort of thing that his father kind of ruined his political career.

00:50:33:27 – 00:50:51:03
Dan LeFebvre
But of course, this time in the movie, we see that Winston speech is a big hit and it seems to launch Churchill’s political career. Is the movie correct to suggest that Churchill’s first major speech in parliament was also about what basically ruined his father’s political career?

00:50:51:05 – 00:51:18:10
Furman Daniel
It is. And you’re exactly right. The movie kind of makes a very complex political issue a little over simple. So, yes, his first major speech was on a budget bill about the military, very similar to what his father had ruined his career on a decade and a half prior. This was also like his father, a break with his own party and a major political risk.

00:51:18:12 – 00:51:39:17
Furman Daniel
But Churchill saw it as a matter of vindicating his father’s legacy. He also saw it as a matter of principle, and he saw it as a way to kind of distinguish himself from all these other nameless politicians. Well, I’m going to take a unique stance and get that attention, even if it’s kind of bad attention from my own party.

00:51:39:19 – 00:52:07:27
Furman Daniel
The other thing the movie leaves out is by this time, Churchill was kind of marginalized his own party. They they kind of tell him, Reach your turn, don’t act out. Don’t break with us on this issue. And he said, I’m not going to wait my turn. I’m not going to do exactly what you tell me. And so almost immediately, he starts getting stifled by the Tory Party and starts as the movie alludes to drifting further and further and further towards the Liberal Party.

00:52:07:29 – 00:52:19:17
Furman Daniel
Right. And eventually, a few years later, he crosses the aisle and actually joins the Liberal Party before again crossing the aisle and joining the Tory Conservative Party later.

00:52:19:19 – 00:52:32:03
Dan LeFebvre
Do we know if he was aware of just how closely he was following in his father’s footsteps with that? Because when we saw that in the movie before, you know, he was in school and they didn’t seem to really have a lot of communication there.

00:52:32:05 – 00:52:57:16
Furman Daniel
Yes, he absolutely did. And he as even as a schoolboy, because he couldn’t talk with his father directly because he craved that parent in a relationship that he didn’t have. He read voraciously from the newspapers as a small boy at school, and he actually neglected his schoolwork, in part to read speeches from the House of Commons and things like that.

00:52:57:18 – 00:53:21:20
Furman Daniel
And he very closely followed his father’s career. The other thing, and I love this is just kind of a only Churchill would do that. He he got his dad to send him autographs that he would then sell for money to his schoolmates. I wish I’d have thought of that or had that opportunity, sort of, you know. So he he followed his father very closely, even as a small boy, albeit from a distance.

00:53:21:22 – 00:53:38:18
Furman Daniel
So he he definitely was aware that this is something that his father had ruined his own career about. He definitely saw it as a matter of kind of vindicating that legacy. He also saw it as a matter as a way to distinguish himself and make a name for himself on an issue that he carried out.

00:53:38:21 – 00:53:43:21
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah. Yeah. I’ll keep telling your father’s side again. It’s great.

00:53:43:24 – 00:54:06:03
Furman Daniel
Another thing I need to mention is early on, you know, shortly after being elected to Parliament, he started writing a two part biography of his father. So fitting into that, I’m going to write the history because I was shaped the history kind of narrative that keeps coming up in this discussion. He wrote a very flattering, almost too much biography on the spot.

00:54:06:06 – 00:54:29:18
Furman Daniel
Right. And again, try to vindicate and show my father gave up his career out of principle and love for the British people and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Kind of. Right. But that’s kind of a self-serving narrative as well. Here’s know my father loved his country so much that he gave up everything for a very made kind of story.

00:54:29:21 – 00:54:45:15
Furman Daniel
But yeah, again, Churchill definitely knew this, and many of his biographers have kind of gone out of their way to say Churchill’s living in the shadow of his father for almost his entire life. And this is just one of countless examples of that.

00:54:45:18 – 00:55:10:04
Dan LeFebvre
At the end of the movie, Churchill is chatting with his mother when he mentions seeing a girl. After the speech. He describes her to his mom and she says, That’s Clementine, Then an adult. Winston’s voiceover tells us that Clementine and Winston were married seven years later and lived happily ever after. It was an end and a beginning. Of course, there’s a lot more to Churchill’s life that we’ll chat about on another day.

00:55:10:10 – 00:55:18:13
Dan LeFebvre
But for today’s story, how well do you think the movie did closing the chapter on this part of Winston Churchill’s life?

00:55:18:16 – 00:55:39:23
Furman Daniel
So this is one of the few places where we have pretty good documentary evidence that the movie is just wrong and it uses creative license. There’s no real accounts that that when he’s giving this speech and sees this beautiful lady immediately after and like one in one party and the other together. It’s great for a movie. And some part of me wishes it was true.

00:55:39:26 – 00:56:05:05
Furman Daniel
Unfortunately, it’s not. He met Clementine at a party and was apparently there during this period, but not at Parliament. I met her at a party and was actually very shy, was apparently so overwhelmed by her kind of presence and her strong personality that she refused to talk to us and that it was already several weeks later that he was actually seated by her at a different party.

00:56:05:12 – 00:56:27:25
Furman Daniel
They began to talk and developed a friendship that blossomed into love and marriage. I wish this kind of I looked up and I saw and who is this wonderful person? And I got married seven years later. It’s true. It’s really not. I will say, though, Churchill’s relationship with Clementine is essential for him. She was truly his soul mate.

00:56:28:02 – 00:56:54:24
Furman Daniel
She understood him. She supported him. She loved him. She was strong enough when she had to to actually stand up to him, which very few people were. They had truly a loving relationship. And unlike his parents, he was he was remarkably faithful to to Clementine in that way as well. So kind of you know, he shows the importance of her starting in this period of his life.

00:56:54:24 – 00:57:00:12
Furman Daniel
But the actual circumstances of them meeting like that at parliament, not true.

00:57:00:15 – 00:57:05:26
Dan LeFebvre
I can understand again, from a movie’s perspective, kind of wrapping it up. They have a lot to cover.

00:57:05:28 – 00:57:18:07
Furman Daniel
I’ll kind of give the movie that. I mean, it it does pretty well on most of the other stuff. And, you know, I think that’s a relatively small thing, actually. Yeah.

00:57:18:09 – 00:57:24:20
Dan LeFebvre
Is there anything about Winston Churchill’s younger life that you wish had made its way into the movie that didn’t?

00:57:24:22 – 00:57:48:25
Furman Daniel
There’s so many little tiny stories that you could absolutely include. I think if there was one I would want to include, it was when he was eight years old and he was playing a game of tag with his family. And they were he was on a bridge and two of his playmates, his family playmates were coming from each side of the bridge, narrow little foot bridge.

00:57:48:27 – 00:58:17:08
Furman Daniel
And this bridge was about 50 feet off the ground over a river. And rather than get captured in this game of tag is the people are coming down the bridge. He actually jumps off this 50 foot bridge and almost dies. He’s actually knocked unconscious. He’s out. He’s unconscious for about three days. He has a severe concussion. He bruises his kidneys and has severe cuts and some broken bones and almost dies.

00:58:17:11 – 00:58:37:15
Furman Daniel
But he did that rather than be tagged in the childhood game. And as I say, a child was game. He was 18. He was the oldest of the children that were playing is his brother. And cousins and some kind of family friends. I think it speaks to the energy for life and the I am going to be famous or going to die trying.

00:58:37:15 – 00:59:07:02
Furman Daniel
I’m going to win or or jump off a bridge. And I think they could have done that. A scene like that as his transition, because it happened right after a break from school right before he went into the army. They could have done that, and I think they could have also rolled something like that. When he jumps off the train and rolls into the ditch, they’re almost a flashback type scene or something like that, You know, a brave and a jump off when it doesn’t matter in this game of tag a brave.

00:59:07:02 – 00:59:26:07
Furman Daniel
And I got to jump off this train to escape in South Africa, maybe something like that. But there’s literally hundreds of cool little stories like that. And I think in general, the movie does a pretty good job of choosing good ones and weaving them together in a pretty coherent script.

00:59:26:10 – 00:59:36:13
Dan LeFebvre
I guess the thought process behind that, I mean, being 18, you have to be young, but old enough to know better. I would think.

00:59:36:15 – 00:59:43:11
Furman Daniel
Writing and like own love, I wouldn’t have cared that much about a game of Tag 89. You know.

00:59:43:14 – 00:59:51:10
Dan LeFebvre
It reminds me where the movie the the tag movie where they were, they’re still playing the game of tag after decades.

00:59:51:12 – 00:59:57:18
Furman Daniel
Yeah, well, if you had me on the show again, I’ll do it. I’ll do a history of the game of tag. I don’t know.

00:59:57:20 – 01:00:03:14
Dan LeFebvre
I actually talked to a couple of people that were there based the movie on, and they did some pretty crazy things for sure.

01:00:03:21 – 01:00:04:29
Furman Daniel
Okay.

01:00:05:01 – 01:00:24:13
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for coming on to chat about young Winston. For listeners who don’t know, you have a book about Winston Churchill that’s coming out soon, and once that is published, of course, I’ll have you back on to chat about Winston Churchill during World War Two and some of who he became after the events in this movie.

01:00:24:16 – 01:00:33:19
Dan LeFebvre
But before I let you go, can you share a sneak peek of your upcoming book and where someone listening to this episode can learn about what your work?

01:00:33:21 – 01:01:02:26
Furman Daniel
So yeah, thanks for letting me talk about myself a little bit. Yeah. So upcoming book, it’ll be out in kind of spring of 2020 for University of Kentucky Press. The title is Blood, Mud and Oil Paint The Remarkable Year that Made Winston Churchill. He basically looks at a one year period of his life when he’s 40 years old, from spring of 1915 to spring of 1916, where he really has his greatest failure.

01:01:03:00 – 01:01:31:14
Furman Daniel
It’s during the middle of World War One. He loses his job as the head of the British Admiralty. He’s facing severe depression, severe financial hardship, and he actually joins back into the military, goes to fight on the front lines of World War One and wins yet again. Kind of military glory during this period. He also learns to paint, which becomes a source of great joy for him the remainder of his life.

01:01:31:14 – 01:01:53:23
Furman Daniel
So the blood of World War One and the blood of failure, the mud of the trenches and the oil paint that helps to redeem himself and told them a kind of a one year slice of his life that I say is the single worst year of his life or worse, 12 month period, his life, But also that serves as kind of this redemptive moment for him.

01:01:53:25 – 01:01:56:16
Furman Daniel
So check it out when it comes out.

01:01:56:19 – 01:02:03:11
Dan LeFebvre
Wow. Yeah. He had such a fascinating life that he’s had so much. I didn’t even know he was into painting.

01:02:03:14 – 01:02:31:12
Furman Daniel
And yeah, he was absolutely fantastic painter. And of course, there’s hundreds of paintings and actually was one some art contest where he put his paintings in under a different mate because he was afraid that if he put them in under his own name, they would, you know, give him kind of the sympathy prize. So he put it in under our pseudonym and actually won several art competition was up, was a pretty fantastic painter.

01:02:31:15 – 01:02:37:27
Dan LeFebvre
Wow. Wow. Well, I’ll make sure to include a link in the show notes for this episode when that book comes out. Thank you again so much for your time, Dan.

01:02:37:27 – 01:02:45:14
Furman Daniel
I really appreciate it. I love your podcast and what you do. Keep up the good work and let me know how I can help.

01:02:45:17 – 01:02:46:11
Dan LeFebvre
Thank you very much.

01:02:46:15 – 01:02:51:16
Furman Daniel
Thank you.