In 1899 Winston Spencer Churchill was 24 years old; he only turned 25 on 30^th November. During most of the year he was in England, working on his book on the campaign in the Sudan in 1898, The River War. The book was published in November 1899 and sold well – a two-volume opus of 1,000 pages – in spite of such criticism as “only this astonishing young man could have written these two ponderous and pretentious volumes”. An abridged version appeared in 1902, has been reprinted many times, and continues to sell well to this day.