'A long way from Piccadilly or Pall Mall'

Marking 150 years since the birth of Sir Winston Churchill, Dr Conor Farrington explores this eminent statesman’s often-overlooked 1907 tour of British East Africa: a journey rich with enchanting natural beauty and sporting adventure

MENTION Churchill and Africa in a sentence together and two contrasting images are likely to come to mind: the young, dashing reporter making a name for himself in the Boer War, and the rotund, cigar-chewing elder statesman on visits to British forces in North Africa more than 40 years later. Readers of Churchill’s sparkling book My Early Life will remember that he was in Sudan in the late 1890s, when Lord Kitchener undertook to avenge General Gordon by defeating the Dervish army. Art connoisseurs will also know of his frequent trips to Marrakech.

But there was another Churchillian visit to Africa that often escapes notice, when – as Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies – he embarked on an extended tour of British East Africa from October 1907 to January 1908. This was a journey of pomp and ceremony, exploration and incident: a semi-royal procession through widely varying landscapes and conditions, shaping Churchill’s view of empire and providing ample opportunity for sport and adventure along the way.

As with most travel in those far-off days, merely getting there was an achievement in itself. Churchill's travelogue, My African Journey, relates his progress past the 'hot stones of Malta' to the 'cinders of Aden' and then, after five days at sea, his delight as Mombasa finally 'rises from the sea and clothes herself with... vivid and exuberant green'. But Churchill didn't linger long at Mombasa or indeed anywhere else on his months-long return to England. Instead, he and his companions - his aunt's husband Colonel Wilson, his private secretary Edward 'Eddie' Marsh and his valet George Scrivings immediately set off inland upon the Uganda Railway, which Churchill described as 'one of the most romantic and most wonderful railways in the world'.

Setting the pattern