The River War

The River War is Winston Churchill’s vivid account of the British campaign in the Sudan and the dramatic struggle against the Mahdist state at the end of the nineteenth century. Written while Churchill was still a young soldier and war correspondent, the book combines eyewitness experience, military history, political analysis, and sweeping descriptions of the people, landscape, and conflict along the Nile.

At the center of the narrative is the Anglo-Egyptian reconquest of the Sudan under General Herbert Kitchener, culminating in the Battle of Omdurman in 1898, where Churchill himself served with the 21st Lancers. He records cavalry charges, gunboats, desert marches, strategy, imperial ambition, and the brutal realities of modern warfare, while also examining the rise of the Mahdi and the forces that transformed the region.

Narrated by Geoffrey Giuliano and The Rebellion, this production brings Churchill’s energetic prose and firsthand observations vividly to life. Giuliano’s distinctive dramatic delivery captures the urgency, danger, controversy, and historical sweep of a remarkable work written by a future prime minister at the very beginning of his public career.