Churchill’s First War: Young Winston at War with the Afghans

Before Winston Churchill became a national hero after his escape from a prison camp in South Africa during the Boer War, he wrote The Story of the Malakand Field Force about his time serving in Afghanistan in 1897. Coughlin (Saddam) confirms the importance of this moment in Churchill’s career and its relation to the present day, with fascinating and enlightening results. When an Afghan official told a NATO official, “You blew up our market,” the reference was not to a recent event, but instead to the 1842 incident when British forces destroyed Kabul’s central bazaar. Coughlin’s account also works as a portrait of power, privilege, and gossip in late Victorian England. He describes a deeply ambitious Churchill who, with the help of his mother, was eager to create a persona that could land him a place in politics back in Great Britain. Assigned by the Daily Telegraph to write dispatches from the front (thanks to the help of his mother), Churchill laid the groundwork for what would be his storied career. Coughlin examines the elements of Churchill’s life that later took the form of a legendary prime minister, but he also provides a history of Afghanistan that reveals the origins of its modern struggles. (Feb.)