WINSTON Churchill visited Malvern in May, 1901.

Then aged 26 and elected MP for Oldham the previous year, Churchill had embarked on a lecture tour to talk about his experiences in the Boer War, during which he acted as a correspondent.

A large audience at the Assembly Rooms may not have been entirely sympathetic judging by this comment from the Malvern News:

"If there is one man who should cheerfully pay an increased income tax consequent upon the war in South Africa that man is Mr Winston Churchill, to whom the campaign has been what every war correspondent, politician and lecturer values: a first-class advertisement."

Churchill was often criticised for his arrogance and in this lecture he clearly dealt at some length with the story of his own escape from the Boers in Pretoria, but his talk was well-received.

"His excellent choice of language and crisp delivery, occasionally marred by a too obtrusive lisp, and a good series of slides illustrating incidents of the campaign, contributed to the effect of his lecture, his closing peroration reflecting on the war and its results in general being much applauded," said the Malvern News.

There is no more record of what he had to say in his lecture, but five days later he made this prescient speech, only his second, in the House of Commons.

"We must not regard war with a modern power as a kind of game in which we may take a hand, and with good luck and good management may play adroitly for an evening and come safe home with our winnings. It is not that, and I rejoice that it cannot be that," he said.

"A European war cannot be anything but a cruel, heartrending struggle, which, if we are ever to enjoy the bitter fruits of victory, must demand, perhaps for several years, the whole manhood of the nation, the entire suspension of peaceful industries, and the concentrating to one end of every vital energy in the community.

"I have frequently been astonished since I have been in this House to hear with what composure and how glibly members, and even Ministers, talk of a European war. I will not expatiate on the horrors of war, but there has been a great change which the House should not omit to notice...

"Foreign nations know what war is. There is scarcely a capital in Europe which has not been taken in the last one hundred years, and it is the lively realisations of the awful consequences of wars which maintains the peace of Europe.

"We do not know what war is. We have had a glimpse of it in South Africa.

"Even in miniature it is hideous and appalling."