Candice Millard on Winston Churchill's "Contagious Courage"

Candice Millard on Winston Churchill in the Boer War: "So what happens is he is on this armored train, it goes out for reconnaissance. He's one of the very, very few civilians on this train. He's the youngest person on this train. And the Boers, what they've done is they they know this train is going to go up this hill in a way, and then it's going to come back the same way. So they pile a bunch of rocks at the bottom of this hill, and then they go to the top. When the train comes, they start firing at it. It goes faster and then it smashes into these rocks.

So who takes over? Who starts giving commands on this train? Winston Churchill again, he's there. He's 24 years old. He's not even in the military. But it's this incredible set of kind of, I call it contagious courage that he has. So he believes in himself and he believes in you, too. So you keep saying, you know, you're not afraid. You're excited about this. This is this is what you're going to do. And the people are like, yeah, yeah, okay. This is what I'm going to do. And so every person who survives this and gets away credits Churchill with saving their lives. But Churchill himself was captured and became a P.O.W."

SUNDAYAmerica's Book Club with Candice Millard 6pm ET on CSPAN

Download the FREE CSPAN Now App.

Discover the CSPAN Video Library at

Explore CSPAN's Free Educational Resources at

C-SPAN: Created by Cable in 1979. Offered as a public service.

Support CSPAN by Donating Today

Subscribe to our YouTube channel

Subscribe:

CSPAN Podcasts

Newsletters

Visit the CSPAN Shop

#cspan