According to Holmes, Churchill bullied his widowed mother for cash unmercifully, even charging to her the cost of his wreath on the grave of his beloved nursemaid Mrs. Everest. At 19 he nearly accidentally killed his 13-year-old brother Jack while out rowing on Lake Lausanne, and afterwards made himself out to be the hero of the incident. As a young Hussar officer he took part in the vicious and hypocritical ostracism of a fellow second-lieutenant, who was forced to resign his commission because he only had an income of £500 a year (when Churchill’s own was £300).

Holmes charges that, soon after that unpleasant incident, Churchill was possibly involved in a race-fixing scandal over the Subaltern’s Cup jump race and that, in the Boer war, he escaped from the Pretoria prisoner of war camp without his colleagues, after having arranged to go over the wall as a team. He is also accused of loving power more than valuing freedom, and of leaving the trenches of the Western Front (”when it suited him”) in order to rebuild his shattered post-Dardanelles career. As Holmes caustically comments: “Over five million of his countrymen did not have that option.”

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