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tv   QA Candice Millard  CSPAN  June 17, 2019 5:59am-6:59am EDT

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in 1979, a small network with an unusual name rolled out a big idea. let viewers make up their own minds. c-span opened the doors to washington policymaking for all to see, bringing you unfiltered content from congress and beyond. a lot has changed in 40 years. on television and online, c-span is your unfiltered view of government, so you can make up your own mind. roger is a public service by your cable and satellite provider. as a publico you service by your cable and satellite provider. ♪ mr. lamb: candice millard, your third book, "hero of the empire." where did you travel to write the book? ms. millard: one of the reasons
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i wanted to write the book was because i had an incredible opportunity. i spent a lot of time in england, obviously in the churchill archives in cambridge, the national army museum, but what was most fascinating was going to south africa. i spent several weeks there traveling everywhere that churchill did. it was extraordinary.
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i think the boer has been largely forgotten. even in england. not many people know about it, but in south africa it is everywhere, battlefield, museums, archives, specifically to this story. i was able to go where winston churchill was captured, to where he was kept as a prisoner of war in pretoria. the same building is still there, a public library. i stood in the trapdoor in the floor of his room where he had thought about tunneling his way out. i went to where he was hiding in a coal mine shaft with rats. i went into what is mozambique but was in portuguese east africa. they still have the same building that was the british consulate where he went when he was finally a free man. mr. lamb: you mentioned the boer war. how many were there? ms. millard: there were two. this is actually the second. the first one was 20 years earlier in 1880 and it was a much shorter war. the british, to their shock and horror, actually lost, and this is a second go around. mr. lamb: there are a lot of people possibly at this moment saying, what in the world is a boer? b-o-e-r. ms. millard: that is right. the boers have been living in south africa for centuries, immigrants largely dutch, german and huguenot. they had over that time transformed into something new, like a new ethnic group.
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they were not european, african, but they were boer and even developed their own language which was a sort of strange mixture of dutch, portuguese , all of these words as they needed them that they developed. they were very, very religious. they were unabashedly racist. they were stubbornly independent. most of all, they wanted to be left alone. mr. lamb: winston churchill, when was the first time you got interested in him? what made you think you could write another book on winston churchill? ms. millard: it is audacious, isn't it? they say there are 12,000 books written about him, more than anyone but napoleon and jesus. believe me, it felt very daunting to me, but i have been interested in winston churchill for a long time, he is absolutely fascinating. not a perfect man by any means but an extraordinary one.
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about 25 years ago i heard this story that when he was a young man he was captured in south africa and was a pow and escaped and it just stayed with me throughout all of these years because it stunned me. i could not believe i did not know the story and that this had happened. after i turned in the manuscript for my second book, i started to think about it more and i thought, "another unknown aspect is the boer war itself." it was really the beginning of modern warfare. i knew i had a larger palette to work with and it is such an incredible adventure story and it is really the formation of a man we know as winston churchill. mr. lamb: getting back to the boer war in a moment, but want to bring folks up to date with your past two books. you wrote a book in 2005 called "river of doubt."
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here you are talking about that. [video clip] ms. millard: this was a serious, scientific expedition that became an extraordinary story of survival. it was a contest of man against nature, man against man and even man against himself. while roosevelt and his men were on the river, they lost nearly all of their supplies to rapids. one man drowned, another murdered. the rest of the men, including roosevelt's own son nearly starved. when the survivors emerged from the rainforest, they were in ranks. -- they were in rags. they were attacked by tribesmen. roosevelt became gravely ill and he nearly took his own life in an attempt to save the other men. mr. lamb: there is a fellow that has been written about. a lot of books. teddy roosevelt. and what was that book about? ms. millard: it was about this expedition he took them on in -- he took on an unmapped river
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in the amazon after the election in 1912, when he had run for a third term and lost. for the first time in his life he was a pariah. he had put a democrat, woodrow wilson, in the white house because he has split the republican vote. he was this incredible naturalist. he had invited to south america on a speaking tour. he thought, while i am there i will go on a collecting trip. he gets there, nothing is well-planned and he is given the opportunity to go on this completely unknown river, extraordinarily dangerous, three men died on the trip. as i said, roosevelt nearly took his own life. it was just this unbelievable encounter. it was not an adventure. said,, as the subtitle his darkest journey. i went to this river and it is incredibly remote.
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i was able to spend some time with the group that attacked roosevelt and his men and nobody, before i wrote this book, the even knew what tribe it was. i figured out who it was. i spent some time with them. i sort of understood why they did not just massacre roosevelt and his men because they certainly could have and had every incentive to do so. it was just this unbelievable experience for me and i loved having opportunity to tell that story. mr. lamb: you used to work for the "national geographic" but this was the first big book. why did the publisher buy this idea? ms. millard: i was unknown but it is annexed ordinary story. -- it is an extraordinary story. have the amazon, the richest ecosystem in the world, absolutely fascinating. you have the opportunity to talk about evolution and all of the interesting things like evolution. you have theodore roosevelt, a figure that there is so much interest in. again, this is similar to
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churchill because this is after his career. while the story was sort of known, not much is known about it because not that much attention had been given to it. because it has a drowning, and murder and all of these other things, it sold very quickly to doubleday, and that is still my publisher. i'm very fortunate to have the same publisher, editor, agent for 15 years. mr. lamb: who is the first person in your life that said, you know, you can write? ms. millard: that was actually my husband. he was a correspondent with the "new york times," a bureau chief and he actually is the person who first told me the story about winston churchill because he began his career as a journalist in south africa covering the anc and he had left the times to go to law school and start this company, and i was working for him freelance and gave him some clips and when he told me that i could write, i believed him. mr. lamb: how did you get to the kansas city area of kansas?
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ms. millard: i had actually moved there right before my senior year of high school. my father worked for sprint, which is headquartered in kansas city. i grew up in ohio which is another connection i had to james garfield, the subject of my second book. so i am very midwestern, and i met him there. he started his company in kansas city. i ended up moving here to washington, d.c., for six years to work for "national geographic." mr. lamb: how did the first book sell? ms. millard: it sold very well, a new york times bestseller. it was an incredible gift to me because it had all of the elements just to make a good story. mr. lamb: you got married in 2001, but you have three kids in the middle of all these three books? how old are the kids today? ms. millard: 14, 11, 8. it is funny because when people
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talk about writing a book is like having a baby, it very much is because it has all been mixed up together for the last 15 years of my life, books and babies. mr. lamb: your second book was 2011. here you are talking about the james garfield book. [video clip] ms. millard: james garfield was not, as he has been remembered to be, a bland, bearded, 19th century politician. he was one of the most extraordinary men ever elected president. although he was born into desperate poverty, he became a professor of literature, mathematics, and ancient languages when he was a sophomore in college. by the time he was 26 years old, he was college president. he knew the entire "aeneid" by heart in latin. while he was in congress, he wrote an original proof of the pythagorean theorem. mr. lamb: would you discover the story about garfield?
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ms. millard: i was looking for another subject with a lot of science in it, and i was researching alexander graham bell, just doing general research and i fell upon the story of him inventing this induction balance to find the bullet in garfield after he had been shot. it really stunned me because, again, i had never heard this story before. i cannot really understand it because bell was young. he had just invented the telephone five years earlier, suddenly famous, a little bit of money, that all of these ideas he wanted to pursue, but as soon as garfield was shot, he abandoned everything and turned his world upside down to try to help him, and like most americans, i do not know anything about garfield except that he had been assassinated. and so, i started researching him and i was stunned. he was this extraordinary man, absolutely brilliant, incredibly courageous. hid a runaway slave, was instrumental in bringing about black suffrage and had so much promise for our young country,
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and it was such a tragedy, and it never should have happened, and i was hooked and i thought, i do not know if anyone is one to read a book about james garfield. because the problem is, not only did they not know anything, they do not think there is interesting to know. he is a bearded, gilded age president and it will not be interesting. he was absolutely fascinating. it really meant a lot to me that people take a chance on this book. mr. lamb: how much, how much travel did you have to do for that book and where did you go? ms. millard: obviously it was a different kind of travel. i was in ohio a lot doing a lot of research there. his home was made it to the first presidential library and is still 80% original to the time he lived in it. there are a lot of archives in cleveland and i spent a ton of time at the library of congress and the presidential papers.
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in fact, i had my youngest child is a baby at that time, and i rented an apartment in virginia with my two youngest children and spent all day, every day in the archives and it was extraordinary. it is amazing that the library of congress has that people do not realize. if i could tell a quick story -- there are a lot of rules, as there should be with our national treasures. i am a rule follower so i was careful to have one card, five bins. i opened a file, and again, this is james garfield, so no one has looked at these for many years, probably since they have been donated and he died in 1881, so i am looking through and i open it up and there is an envelope in this file but the front of it is facing the table.
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i do not know what is in it. i open it and all of it is hair spilling out onto the table and on the front is written "clips from president garfield's head on his deathbed." i desperately tried to get it back in. i think they are going to throw me out, my career was over. at the same time i was panicking, i was so moved by it. it looked like you could have clipped it from your child's head yesterday. it is this connection that you get to these people that become almost mythical to us. we study them and they have this -- we study them at this remove. it was a reminder, he was 49 years old and it was this unbelievable tragedy. there was this human connection that was profound to me at the time. mr. lamb: did you grow up partly in ohio? ms. millard: i did, until i was 17 i grew up in ohio in a little town called lexington. it is kind of between cleveland and columbus, just a small, largely working-class town, a great place to grow up. mr. lamb: what did your parents do? ms. millard: my father worked
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for the united telephone of ohio and then worked for sprint and my mother was a secretary. i had three sisters and a very happy childhood. mr. lamb: you went to college. what did you study? ms. millard: i went to a liberal arts school in bakersfield studying english. i went to texas and went to baylor and got my masters in english. mr. lamb: where did you learn to research? ms. millard: national geographic. i will say it was always my true education because you learned to dig very, very deeply into a subject, immerse yourself and most importantly of all, i learned how to find the experts. whatever subject you are working on, there is somebody that knows it really, really well and has spent years of their life studying it, and what is extraordinary to me, when i started to write my first book i thought, it is one thing to call someone and say, i am candice millard from national geographic, will you help me? it is totally different to say, i am candice millard. full stop. will you help me?
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it did not matter. absolutely they helped me because they were enthusiastic about their subject and they were appreciative that somebody was interested and genuinely wanted to get it right. mr. lamb: on your website there is a video that shows you at your workstation. i assume that is in your home. it shows all of the books on the shelves, your previous books and all of that. we never see your face on this. explain why that is? ms. millard: that is my husband's company. he has his own company, a publishing company, and he gave me this fantastic workspace and it really helps having three kids, so i work and school hours, drop them off and then go to work, close the door and i'm in this different world, different time period and it is sort of disconcerting when i have to leave to go pick them up because i have to kind of return to the present day.
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it is fantastic and as you can see i have three monitors, which when i have to work at home, i really miss them because they are hugely useful. mr. lamb: you have told the story of three older white men, why? why not mix itwi what attracts you to these three leaders? ms. millard: like i said, i am looking for a good story. it has to be a strong enough story that can support other things i want to talk about, whether it is the amazon rain forest or the evolution of modern medical care, in this case modern warfare, so you need a strong enough story to keep people with you and so you can talk about all of these other things. i had a ton of primary source material to work with. you know, a lot of letters, diaries, newspaper accounts so i could have dialogue and i could have all those little details you need, especially with narrative nonfiction to hopefully bring a story alive.
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for each of these, people sometimes say i write i do not just write biographies but i hope the story i tell will be illuminating about this person and time. to me it is, to me i can see winston churchill, you can see -- even though on the outside he looks completely different because he is so young, inside he is fully formed and it is fascinating to see that. you see that through his writings and the things everyone around him is saying about him and watch this growth and know where it is all headed. these are just fascinating stories to me. but i am absolutely open and i have ideas for my next one and one is actually a woman. mr. lamb: let's go back to the boer war story and show a map of the south african area. if you can explain to us what we are seeing. ms. millard: when churchill
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arrived he arrived at the cape of good hope, but the war had already begun a few days before and an orange area, that is the main area of war. and right there where you see pretoria, just below it is lady smith which was already under siege. the british were trapped inside boers surrounding them. churchill wanted to get to the front as quickly as he could. he actually came with a commander-in-chief of south africa. he was on the same ship. he knew the british army was going to be very slow so he set off on his own, going by train over the into the interior and that he cut across and went to the indian ocean, took a small mail boat until he could get to the transvaal. by the time he made it to ladysmith, it was shut down so he could not get anywhere near it. he had to stop about 40 miles south of it in a little town.
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called escort. mr. lamb: as i was reading your book i thought, these are words in places i have never seen in my life. was there any concern that people reading it in the united states, this would be hard to understand? ms. millard: i think there a lot of interest in south africa and we know a lot about the more recent history, obviously with the apartheid and nelson mandela. this is what comes before. the boers become the afrikaners. i knew there would be interest in it and we have tons of maps so i try to take them through and explain the history and i hope i can carry the readers with me so they understand what is happening before we actually get to the real action. mr. lamb: when winston churchill went to this part of the world, how old was he? ms. millard: 24 years old. this is his fourth war on three different continents. he has already written three
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books and he has already run for parliament and lost. he was a little ambitious. mr. lamb: how was he able to be a correspondent and a military man at the same time? ms. millard: he left the military so he could run for parliament. the reason he got into the military was it was the only job he had ever had, the only job he had been trained for but he called it the glittering gateway into distinction, so he thought, and he threw himself into an incredibly, incredibly dangerous situations again and again so he would be noticed, so that he could win medals and thought it would propel me to the political stage and fulfill the destiny that he believed he had. it was not happening for him. he was frustrated, moving too slow, so he stopped. he ran for parliament and lost, and he realized, i was too soon. i lept too fast. i need to make a name for myself. when the boer war broke out that
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-- his father as an opportunity. he went there is a correspondent. he had been working as a journalist for a while and that is how he was supporting himself. mr. lamb: you talk about in your acknowledgments that you were introduced to winston churchill by william manchester? ms. millard: right. mr. lamb: what year? ms. millard: how many of us can say that? i mean, that goes back quite a ways. william manchester is extraordinary. world of churchill studies, it is obviously martin gilbert, a man who just passed away about a year ago, and it was such a loss, because he did such extensive, extensive research. but william manchester absolutely brought the story alive for me and, i think, for so many readers. so i wanted to give credit where credit was due because that is what really captured my imagination. mr. lamb: how much of this kind of writing got your attention? ms. millard: churchill's or manchester's? mr. lamb: manchester's? ms. millard: a lot of it.
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i think he is very, very vivid. you never feel there is a forced march to get to whatever the big event is. everything builds up toward it. everything you might think is a tangential story turns out to be of great importance. it is incredibly vivid. i was absolutely drawn to that. mr. lamb: in 2012, paul reed was here. here's a neck search from that interview. he did the third book because william manchester had died. let's listen to a little bit of this. [video clip] mr. reed: he read his plato, aristotle, cicero, and at one point, i said, yes, he is a victorian man but he made himself into a classical man. he had -- i think he lived a life in accordance, the precursor to the christian ethic that you find in plato and greek
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philosophers, a humanist but godless ethic. mr. lamb: you say in your book, he was more rooseveltian than a victorian. explain that? ms. millard: that is the american in him. i see a lot of similarities between theodore roosevelt and winston churchill. his mother was american. he always felt a connection to america. he was very much a self advertiser and he was called that. he was called a medal punter, a young whippersnapper. it was unusual for a member of the aristocracy, the military to show their ambition openly and brag about what they had achieved. i always felt that was the american in him and it just makes him unusual, especially
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for the position he held in england. mr. lamb: i mentioned martin gilbert who died recently. here he was in 1991 on this program talking about winston winstonl, talking about churchill. [video clip] >> in 1900 after a battle, many british people claimed victory in south africa. they were excited. the flag went up. he wrote a piece about it, a journalistic piece and ended his piece "if modern man would see the face of war more often, ordinary folk would see it hardly ever." >> a beautiful quote. mr. lamb: he went on to lead one of the worst wars in the history of the world. language is good but what does it mean? ms. millard: one of the things that is interesting to me, this story, the part of churchill's life is that when we think of
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winston churchill we think the older man sending young men into war, but no one knew better, and few knew as well the realities of war, the terror and the devastation and he said to his mother after the second war, you cannot gild it, and he had nearly been killed many times. shot at. a horse standing next to him was killed. the feather was shot off of the top of his hat. he had killed man himself. it watched his friends not just killed, but mutilated, sliced to ribbons. he absolutely knew the disaster that war was. he found it exhilarating but he was incredibly clear eyed about it. and, to me, i think most importantly, very magnanimous in victory, always the first to reach of the hand of friendship
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and try to help the enemy rebuild. that was important to him. that started even in a war in south africa. mr. lamb: when did you start your research on this book? ms. millard: about five years ago, right after i finished my manuscript for "destiny of the republic." i had had this sort of percolating in my mind and was really interested so i started the research right away. but it is a big job. you know, as we were talking about earlier, there is a lot to know about winston churchill, even at this young age. and a lot of travel involved and just a lot of time thinking about it. i think that a lot of people who are interested in writing think that writing is sitting at a keyboard and typing, but it is really thinking. you know, you have to gather all of the information, you have to absorb it and then you have to understand it and then you have to figure out how you are going to tell the story. mr. lamb: when you started the
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research on this one, your oldest was about nine. how have you juggled raising three kids and having time to think and read and research and travel? ms. millard: it takes longer than i always think it is going to. i always laugh with my editor because i'm always late on my deadline, and not just a week or a month but like, a year. a year late. and i keep saying, "yes, three months, maybe six months." so, it does take longer. but i work school hours, and i drop them off and then i go to work and i am in this world and i actually i think in some ways than if i did not have children and the other demands of my time because it forces discipline on you. i know i have this window of time to work and that is it. and if so, i really buckle down and it helps to have an office somewhere else. i am not thinking about the
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laundry or the messy house. mr. lamb: in 1900, how big was the british empire? ms. millard: it was huge. i mean, it was larger than the roman empire was at its height and that was a problem for the british empire because they were spread so thin they were constantly putting down revolts. they were winning those other wars, but it was very difficult. i think that is why the boer war surprise them so much because i thought it was going to be another colonial war. it started in october, definitely will be over by christmas and it lasted almost three years. mr. lamb: what was within the british empire, what countries did they have control of? ms. millard: it was spread out all over from ireland, all through africa, obviously into india. it was just incredibly diverse and incredibly complex and difficult. i think that is when it all started to come undone. mr. lamb: you say in your book
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there were 450 million people under the british empire, a quarter of the world. how did churchill get in a position of any importance whatsoever at the age of 24? ms. millard: he had a very charismatic mother. his father had been a leader of the house of commons and died when his father was only 45 years old. she was a young widow. she caught the eye of many people including the prince of wales. she had a lot of connections. he said we must push with the best. he was always saying get me an appointment, get me a regiment. whenever a war would break out, he wanted to be there. he would push her to push somebody else to get in an -- to get him an assignment so
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he was always all over the world to try to be noticed. mr. lamb: when did you change your mind as you went through your research? when did you say, i had no idea? ms. millard: again and again. this happens every single time. i get in, thinking i understand the story, and it turns on me. with this what was so shocking was how fully formed churchill was at that time. when you read his letters -- there was a love interest, pamela. he is writing to her the first time he runs for parliament, and he says, i do not know what is going to happen with this election but with every speech i give i feel my growing power. he had this idea of this destiny that he had. now, there was a lot of luck
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along the way, but he absolutely knew. he had what is called faith in his star. it is astonishing. i do not know what you are like a 23 or 24, but i had no idea who i was or who i wanted to be, how to get there. he had it planned out. mr. lamb: you said in the book that he had 1500 toy soldiers. ms. millard: yes, he did, and you can still see some of them. some of them are actually in the war rooms in london. he was fascinated by war. from a very young age. he is a direct descendent of the marlborough, who is considered to be one of the greatest generals in british history, and he was very, very much aware of that legacy. he went to the sandhurst royal military academy, and he loved the wargames. he thought it was a shame it
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cannot be real. the first chance he got, he jumped into it. mr. lamb: how many people lived in that area we saw on the map? ms. millard: i mean, the boers were scattered. if you're only talking about the boers, there was a large african population which was very much oppressed and discriminated against but the boers were scattered and that is actually what made them a dangerous and difficult enemy. the british were still fighting in perfect, precise lines. they had only just given up the red coats. they called this the khaki war. going into the boer war, they had no idea what they were up against. the boers who had been fighting for centuries with the zulu or hunting, they know how to disappear and how to at come at
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the enemy, so it was shocking. you have thousands of people coming thousands of miles to ar that they know nothing about. mr. lamb: i want to share the cover of your book. you talk about the helmet on the head and you call it a cork helmet. when you see the picture -- where does it come from? ms. millard: that is from an earlier war in sudan. right before this war. mr. lamb: how much education did he have at this point? ms. millard: only sandhurst. it actually took in three attempts to pass the test to get into sandhurst and he did not have a college education. and he felt that deeply, actually, and when he was in india, his first assignment, he was in the military, and he had his mother constantly send him books to educate himself. that was obviously a theme throughout his life. he was a voracious reader.
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mr. lamb: what rank was he? what was the arrangement that he was also a correspondent? ms. millard: he actually got a trouble with that. there were no rules against being a soldier and corresponded at the time. he was an officer. he was openly critical of the generals, especially kitchener. who hated him, and that continued throughout their lives. and because of churchill, because of the role he played, and because he was so openly critical, they finally made a rule. you cannot be both. you can be in a military, or you can be a correspondent, but you cannot be both. then, during the boer war, when he becomes a huge hero, he makes -- mistake, and he goes back
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thank you for what you have done -- they had lost battle after battle -- what can we do for you? he says, give me a regiment. i went to go, and i want to fight, and he puts them in a position, i cannot do that, we have this rule because of you. and churchill understood what he was doing. he knew how difficult it was. but he did not care. he wanted to be able to do both. in a position of the morning post but he absolutely wanted to get into a fight. they said, all right. we will let you do it. it ends up -- it is just an incredible turn of events in history. he ended up going with a regiment to pretoria on the day that it fell to the british, and he takes over the prison and he frees the men who had been his fellow prisoners. he puts in the prison his former jailers and he watches as the boer flag is torn down and the union jack is wasted in its
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place. mr. lamb: you say that you talk to his granddaughter? ms. millard: yes, she is an extraordinary person, and she has studied carefully. she was close to him when he was alive. she has also made her career, she calls it chasing churchill. she has written many books about him. she has gone everywhere he has gone. she wrote a book about this. it is a different kind of book. she takes her son with her and they are in the book. present day, saying this is where these events took place, but she spent a lot of time in south africa and she was very, , very gracious to me. mr. lamb: here she is talking about the boer war. [video clip] >> it was now or never. i stood on a ledge, seized the top of the wall and drew myself up. twice, i let myself down in hesitation. and then, with a third resolve,
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scrambled up and over. landing among the bushes on the other side of the prison wall, winston churchill placed his feet firmly on the international stage. just 25, he could now begin to fulfill his own prophecy. i have faith in my star but i'm intended to lose something in the world. mr. lamb: who is her mother? ms. millard: her mother was one of churchill's daughters. i am forgetting her name. anyway, she was very close and her mother, unfortunately, took her own life, and so, i think she feels a strong connection with her grandfather and that absolutely comes through. mr. lamb: what would you have seen if you had been able to
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have a conversation with winston churchill at age 24? ms. millard: i would have seen an absolutely arrogant, ambitious, fascinating young man who was determined to fulfill what he believed was his destiny and that is what is so interesting about him. there are a lot of young men and young women who think they're doing -- they are going to do something great in the world, but the difference is that a lot of them wait for things to sort of happened to them, and instead, winston churchill seized this opportunity. he cannot have predicted what happened to him in south africa. he could not have believed it would take this incredible turn, but it did, and as he himself later said, could i have known that this misfortune would lay the foundations for my later life? so i think, even at that later time, it would have been fascinating to talk to him and
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be able to look to the future and see what would become of him and the world. mr. lamb: why was he a hero? ms. millard: that is what he had always wanted to be. right? this war after war that he throws himself into. he wants to be gallant. he wants to be noticed. he does not want to do something quietly. he wants everybody to pay attention because he thought that was his pathway to power. heros considered a throughout england after he made it out alive. again, the british were losing. this really raised the morale. they needed something, they needed a hero, somebody get behind, and here is this young man who had humiliated the boers and had this incredible adventure, and it was an incredible boost to all of them and their morale, and he was a hero, and he himself said, he very quickly ran for parliament
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, a matter of months, and won this time, and he wrote a letter to the prime minister and said there is no question that it was because of my popularity out of the war in south africa. mr. lamb: i wrote down a quote. alongon my gray pony all the front of the skirmish line where everybody else was lying down in cover." and then, at the end of that quote, "without the gallery, things are different." explain what all of that means. ms. millard: again, he wanted to be noticed. so he said, given an audience, no act is too daring or too noble. he was in british india and have bought this horse from a young soldier who had been killed earlier in the same war, and to the astonishment and horror of the men around him, he rode this
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,hite pony on the battlefield just hoping somebody in charge would notice and think he is incredibly brave and that he deserved the victoria cross because of it. chances were was much more likely the enemy would notice him first and be killed. mr. lamb: this is an interesting story about his mother, who you say is an american. explain how she was an american. the story about the fundraiser, the party, the same day that he was, i believe, taken prisoner. her name was jenny. what was that all about? the quote that caught my attention is that somebody said she was a bit short on brain. ms. millard: no, that was the man she ended up marrying. so jenny, her father was well known in the united states. she had grown up in brooklyn and he had won several fortunes.
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and lost several fortunes, and he was having all of these affairs, so her mother finally took her and her sisters to france, and it was soon after that that she met lord randolph churchill. she was a glittering figure in british society and she loved it, loved that spotlight. and i think that churchill adored his mother but, at a distance. he was put in boarding school at a very young age and did not see his parents much. his father was busy with his political career. his mother was busy with her parties, but when churchill is going off to war, she threw a huge benefit, wanted to put together a hospital ship to go to south africa. one of the reasons she wanted to go is that she was in love with a young man who was only two weeks older than winston churchill. and she tells him, look, i going to marry george and he said, i do not think you will. i think the family pressure will
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crush him. jenny -- her son took this from her. she was very determined. she did not care what anybody else thought. she was having a great time. and she did end up marrying george, and you will be shocked to learn that it did not last. just a few years, and he ended up leaving her for another older woman who was an actress. mr. lamb: george cornwallis west was his name. short on brain. ms. millard: he was very handsome, but, yes, not an intellect. mr. lamb: where do you find yourself having the most fun in the book? ms. millard: during his escape. everything -- there is a lot to explain until you get to the heart of the story.
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most americans do not know anything about the boer war or were and what is winston churchill doing in south africa anyway? what is going on? but once you get to when he is on this armored train, and he is 24 years old, he is one of the few civilians on the train and it is attacked by the boers, and he immediately takes charge of the defense of the train even though there are lots of soldiers on the train. legitimate, uniformed soldiers. their commander is right there. the man who is a friend of winston churchill and had invited him on this train. he takes charge. what is even more extraordinary is that everybody listens. they listen to him and they do what he tells them to do. every man who makes it out alive credits winston churchill for his resourcefulness and his bravery for saving their lives. >> how does he become a
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prisoner? >> he jumps off. they finally free what is left of the train. half of it was catapulted off the tracks. half of the train was blocking the tracks. they were able to get the train going while there are bullets. raining down on them. they get away. he jumps off because he thinks there are more wounded men. he is going to help them. he gets there, and he realizes that they have already been taken prisoner. he looks up and he sees two boers and he reaches for his pistol and he realizes that he left it on the train and he was a huge admirer of napoleon, and he remembered a quote from napoleon saying, if you are alone and unarmed there is no shame in surrender and he raises his hands and surrenders. they take him to pretoria, to a building which was a teacher's college, a school, and today, it is a public library.
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the building still stands there, but it was a prison just for officers. there was another place for soldier prisoners, and it was surrounded by six and a half foot tall corrugated iron, constantly patrolled by armed guards. he was only there for about one month and he immediately -- as soon as he was taken prisoner, he is furious because he thinks that this incredible war is going on without him. with all of these opportunities for gallantry and to make his name and to make his mark, and he wanted to escape and he is miserable. he hated being a prisoner. in fact, years later, he wrote that he hated every minute of captivity more than he had ever hated any other period in his whole life. so from the moment he was captured, he was making plans to escape. but being winston churchill, they are not sort of simple, quiet plans.
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his plans were, ok, we're going to take over this prison, and then we are going to take over the prison where -- where the soldiers are, and then we're going to take over the city and capture the president and end the war, and nobody would listen to him. he heard these two guys, his friend who had been a commander of the armored train, and another guy who was very savvy. he spoke zulu and afrikaans, and he heard them plotting and -- a very simple escape. when the lights would come on at night, they were newly electric lights, there was one corner of the wall that was dark. they knew that if you time to write, if the card had turned his back you could get over the wall and churchill tells them that he wanted in on the plan and neither of them want to take him. they know that he is too talkative, too famous, and he is
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not strong enough. he would be a burden. but holden feels guilty and says, look, we do not want you to come but i will leave it up to you and churchill says, i am coming and he actually makes it over the wall and they don't. he leaves them behind. mr. lamb: pretoria is where? ms. millard: pretoria is farther north, up from where we saw ladysmith, so, it is farther north, and that it is still, i mean, it is 500 miles north of british cape colony. so it is very far from there. to the west and the north, it is highly protected by the boers so his only option was to go east, to portuguese east africa. but it is almost 300 miles. mr. lamb: this territory is
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under the sovereignty of what? is it british? ms. millard: no, the boers. it is all enemy territory. mr. lamb: how did they could get -- how do they get that territory? ms. millard: they took it from the native africans over centuries. in 1833, the british abolished slavery and that was the breaking point for the boers who had always wanted independence anyway, so they went on what was called the great trek, and they traveled hundreds of miles into the african interior, and they established three different republics. the most important of which was the transvaal, which is where pretoria is, and that is the capital. mr. lamb: so, he escaped from prison and what happened to make him a hero and why was he -- how did people know about it? ms. millard: everybody knew . even though you think, he is just a 24-year-old, but he was
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the son of lord randolph churchill and randolph churchill had actually been in south africa a few years earlier and was hated by the boers because he wrote all of these letters that were published in british newspapers excoriating the boers for many things, especially their treatment of native africans, so when they captured winston churchill, it was fantastic. they were thrilled. it was the son of a lord. he represented everything that they despised about the british empire. when he escapes, they are humiliated and enraged and they are searching everywhere to find him and recapture him or there is a very real risk that they will kill him if they find him. howard?: who is john ms. millard: and this is one of
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these moments where just an incredible instance of luck, so when the boer war began, they forced out most of the britons who were living in the area at the time. they only kept the people that were essential to them. john howard was running a -- the coal mines. they are bringing up coal, and that is running the country and running the war, and so churchill, when he is alone, and he is scared, and he has nothing, so his co-conspirators are still in prison, and they have a map. the food, the weapons, the plan. he does not speak the language. he has nothing. he is just at every moment thinking he is going to be captured, and he is desperate, and he sees in the distance these fires, and at first he thinks it is an african village and he thinks he will go there and ask for help because he thinks the africans hate the b
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oers even more than the british do, some of you can get them to lend me a guide and a horse. he realizes these are the fires from the coalerie. and he stops and realizes that he is taking an incredible chance because all he has been doing is hiding and he is going to step out of the gloom, and he thinks, i have to, you know? there is no other way about it, so he comes up with a crazy story and he knocks on the first door that he comes to and john howard opens the door and he starts to tell him, i am a boer, and i fell off the train and hurt my shoulder, and he is thinking, i do not speak afrikaans. how am i going to pull this off? and john howard looks at him and says i think you should come inside so he takes into a room and he puts a gun on the table and churchill realizes he has had it the whole time and he turns around and he locks the door and churchill thinks this
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is not going well for me and he says, i think i should tell you the truth and howard says, i think you better, and he says, i am winston churchill, and i have escaped. and he reaches out his hand and he says, i am english, i'm going to help you, and churchill says it felt like it was like a drowning man being pulled out of the water. mr. lamb: there is a lot more to the story after this. what did you trust when you are going to your primary source? did winston churchill write about this, and what makes you think he was telling the truth, given that he wanted glory? ms. millard: he wrote it in articles for "the morning post." he wrote about the experience in his fantastic autobiography.
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called "my early life," and it is from his childhood to 1900. it was not just his word. john howard wrote about it. this other man who helps him get over to portuguese east africa, who was hiding him in a train -- he wrote about it as well and and small things, like he did an interview to churchill. i have those sources as well. the men who were with him in the prison, all of these things corroborate what churchill was saying. mr. lamb: with all of the traveling you did, what was the most important? ms. millard: to me, standing on the south african felt and understanding what churchill was feeling because when we think of winston churchill, it seems like a different species. he is this incredibly famous man, absolutely far from a
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perfect man but one of the greatest leaders in the history of the world, and he so removed, -- he felt so removed. but standing there, you can understand his desperation and this sense of vulnerability. and at one point, while he is traveling, he was not a religious man but he finally prayed for guidance and help because he has nowhere else to turn and that is something that i think anybody can understand and there was this shared humanity that we have. mr. lamb: you say the south african veld -- what is it? ms. millard: it is the terrain of south africa. so it is a very low, flat, scrubby terrain, and there is not much there. living in kansas, it reminds me of the kansas horizon just goes on and on forever. mr. lamb: we are about out of time. you have three kids. boys? girls? ms. millard: i have two girls
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and one boy. >> do they read your books? >> my oldest daughter has read my first two books. she is very interested in history. mr. lamb: your husband told you you first that you were a good writer? did he get involved in these books? ms. millard: he comes with me when i go to do research, which is fun for me and great because he was a war correspondent. especially when i was going to south america for my first book, and there were a few dodgy situations, it is nice to have him with me. mr. lamb: so do you want to tell us who you are thinking about writing about next? ms. millard: to be honest, i do not know. i have three possibilities but i have a lot of work to do before i know if any of them are going to work. mr. lamb: here is the cover of the book, "hero of the empire: the boer war, a daring escape, and the making of winston churchill." our guest has been candice
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millard of near kansas city, kansas. thank you very much. ms. millard: thank you. >> all q&a programs are available on our website or as a podcast at c-span.org. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> they are "q&a," editorial cartoonist michael ramirez, a two-time pulitzer prize winner. he talks about his career and his book, "give me liberty or ive me obamacare." that is next sunday on "q&a." >> the reviews are in for c-span's "the presidents" book. kirkus reviews calls it a
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milestone in the evolving and ever-changing reputations of our presidents, and from the new york journal of books, "the president's" makes a fast, engrossing read. how notedt presidential historians rank the best and worst chief executives, from george washington barack obama. challenges they faced, the legacies they have left behind. "the presidents" is now available as a hardcover or e-book today wherever books are sold. >> here is a look at our live coverage monday. on c-span, senator mark warner of virginia will does is china's strategy to control technology, including 5g wireless and artificial intelligence. that gets underway at 12:30 p.m. , it is the u.s. global

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