Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill

by Candice Millard

“I do not believe the Gods would create so potent a being as myself for so prosaic an ending.”

The first modern humans in southern Africa were the San, who lived there for tens of thousands of years before the KhoiKhoi arrived. After the KhoiKhoi, tens of thousands of years more passed before the Dutch made an appearance. It took the Dutch less than a hundred years, however, to so devastate both the San and the KhoiKhoi populations that by 1750 there was little sign of either tribe within 250 miles of Table Bay.

After visiting a diamond mine and seeing how incredibly dangerous it was to extract “from the depths of the ground, solely for the wealthy classes, a tiny crystal to be used for the gratification of female vanity,” Randolph had, to the horror and outrage of his British readership, come “coldly to the conclusion that, whatever may be the origin of man, the woman is descended from an ape.”

the outer membrane of a calf’s intestine that’s traditionally used in making gold leaf—

Still, in very Churchillian fashion, he wanted both jobs, and he wasn’t about to withdraw his request simply to spare Buller discomfort.