The remarkable story of Winston Churchill and Jan Smuts, two hugely influential figures, who, though they met each other first as enemies, enjoyed a friendship that remained unbroken for almost half a century.
'[Jan Smuts was] probably more fitted to guide struggling and blundering humanity through its sufferings and perils towards a better day than anyone who lived in any country during his epoch'
Winston Churchill in a letter of condolence to Smuts's widow, Isie Smuts
The remarkable friendship between Winston Churchill and Jan Smuts is a rich study in contrasts. In youth they occupied very different worlds: Churchill, the rambunctious and thrusting young aristocrat; Smuts, the ascetic, philosophical farm boy from the Western Cape in South Africa who would go on to Cambridge where, in an unprecedented achievement, he sat both parts of a law tripos simultaneously and won a double first.
Brought together first as enemies in the Anglo-Boer War, and later as allies in the First and Second World Wars, the men forged a friendship that spanned the first half of the twentieth century and endured until Smuts's death in 1950. Richard Steyn's vivid portrait of this close friendship has drawn on a wealth of archival and secondary sources. It is a fascinating account of two exceptional men in war and peace: one the leader of an empire, the other the leader of a small, fractious member of that empire who rose to global prominence.
'The importance of the relationship between Winston Churchill and Jan Smuts has received belated recognition in Richard Steyn's elegant new book. Smuts' role as Churchill's comrade, guide, and, in Steyn's depiction, wise critic, is rarely celebrated and often overlooked'
Kenneth Weisbrode, author of Churchill and the King
The importance of the relationship between Winston Churchill and Jan Smuts has received belated recognition in Richard Steyn's elegant new book. Smuts' role as Churchill's comrade, guide and, in Steyn's depiction, wise critic, is rarely celebrated and often overlooked. In
Churchill's Confidant, Steyn rescues it from the condescension of posterity, and enriches our understanding of both men with this cogent testament to friendship in public life.
