The Athenaeum review of The Malakand Field Force that compared Churchill as a writer to Burke and Disraeli also criticized the proofreading errors and sloppy edits that, without attribution, came from Churchill’s uncle Moreton Frewen. It is unknown if Churchill was aware of his uncle’s nickname “Mortal Ruin” (for his many failed business ventures), but Frewen was certainly the one responsible for the review’s criticism that in the book “one word is printed for another, words are defaced by shameful blunders, and sentence after sentence ruined by the punctuation of an idiot or of a school-boy in the lowest form.”
Churchill found the criticisms harsh but fair, and he knew he would never let such errors happen again. Churchill lost no time in revising the review:
