I remember bidding in a Midlands auction house for a set of old fishing flies. The price rocketed and they were eventually sold to a friend. Their value was that they had once belonged to Neville Chamberlain, the prime minister of the brolly and the ill-fated Munich Agreement.
Premiership comes with many trappings, but huge stress. Few give the impression of enjoying their time at the top, or have much time to wind down, but Chamberlain apparently relaxed by fishing for trout. A true countryman, he could also identify every bird, flower and tree he saw on country walks.
Writing a biography of Sir Winston Churchill in this, the 150th year of his birth, I wondered what other hobbies Britain’s premiers had, although I greeted with incredulity Boris Johnson’s revelation that he relaxed by making and painting model London buses. For novelty value, it certainly beat Theresa May’s running through a wheatfield, at least. Clement Attlee, prime minister from 1945-51, was a good billiards player and had a life-long love of cricket, as did John Major and Alec Douglas-Home, who served from 1963-64.
Anthony Eden, remembered for presiding over the Suez crisis, had a remarkable eye for modern paintings, while Harold Macmillan, who took over from him, was a publisher with a genuine love of old books. He was also associated in the public mind with grouse moors, while Robert Walpole, in office from 1721-42, relaxed by hunting in Richmond Park.
As a young man, Lord Rosebery asserted he would marry an heiress, win the Derby and become Britain’s prime minister. He achieved this unlikely triple when his horses romped home twice whilst he held down the top job, married to Hannah, a Rothschild heiress.
Harold Wilson, who posed as a humble pipe-smoking man of the people, was actually fonder of brandy and cigars in private, just like Churchill, who retired from the Commons in 1964, the yearWilson scraped into power.
But it was Churchill who perhaps mastered the highs and lows of office better than anyone. He suffered from depression, which he called his black dog, but mostly when out of office. In 1915, after leaving the cabinet in disgrace over the failed Gallipoli operation, he found solace in painting, eventually completing around 550 works, each taking him around a day and now eagerly sought by collectors.
Modern decision-makers may choose to work out in a gymnasium, but one of Churchill’s stress-busting equivalents was to daub oil on canvas, at which he became quite proficient. However, he only had time to make one painting during the Second World War, at Marrakech in Morocco, when meeting President Roosevelt in January 1943.
In modern times, Churchill has increasingly come under attack, often because of his deep connection to the British Empire into which he was born in 1874 and came to represent by the end of his long and storied life in 1965.
He has variously been accused of racism, xenophobia, megalomania and alcoholism.
Most recently, US commentator Daryl Cooper claimed during an interview with former Fox TV host Tucker Carlson that “the Nazis did not intend to murder millions” and that “Winston Churchill was the chief villain of the Second World War”.
He alleged that Churchill wanted a war, demonised his predecessor Neville Chamberlain in 1940, and “ordered Bomber Command to undertake terrorist attacks on German cities”. Cooper claimed Churchill’s “whole plan ‘was we don’t have a way to fight this war ourselves'”, and Britain needed “either the Soviet Union or the United States to do it for us”, describing it as “a craven, ugly way to fight a war”.
All patently wholly untrue. Churchill did not want war, but recognised that diplomacy could only be effective if the Western powers were well armed, as today with Russia and China. Moreover, he spent much of his life creating alliances with Russia and America, rather than sitting back and letting others fight and die on his behalf. Plus, the 450,900 lives Britain and her colonies lost in 1939-45 prove there was no lack of sacrifice.
Cooper also erroneously claimed Churchill “went bankrupt” and was “bailed out by the Zionists”. He was never bankrupt, though undoubtedly he consistently lived beyond his means.
Even the champers and cigars he loved – and used as a form of relaxation throughout his life – were grounded in his experiences as a young man under fire.
In 1895, Churchill went to report on Cuba’s War of Independence fro
Spain, narrowly missing being shot and killed on his 21st birthday.
That day, he found he had no fear of frontline combat. He celebrated with a Cuban cigar and champagne. Both would become his lifelong companions, and he was blessed with an iron constitution that seemed to make him immune from the side-effects of either.
One of his valets noted at the height of the blitz in 1940 that Churchill smoked up to ten cigars a day, but those sent to him as gifts had to be destroyed or given to others in case they were sabotaged. He even owned a favourite silver ashtray, which travelled everywhere with him in its own custom-made case.
Elaborate security measures were undertaken to ensure his weekly supply from a favourite tobacco merchant in London’s St James’s Street was not interrupted, with Winston investing in his own reserve stock of up to 3,000 cigars. Smoking throughout each day, the nicotine in his cigars acted as a relaxant, as well as giving him something to fiddle with when he was anxious. By his death, it was calculated that he had smoked 250,000.
Even more impressive was Churchill’s champagne habit. In the first of the 31 books he wrote, not counting 27 volumes of speeches lifetime, he says “a single glass of champagne imparts a feeling of exhilaration. The nerves are braced, the imagination is agreeably stirred, the wits become more nimble. A bottle produces the contrary effect. Excess causes a comatose insensibility. So it is with war, and the quantity of both is best discovered by sipping”.
Even when writing this in 1898, he had developed a liking for the reviving drink at lunch and dinner.
The next year, he arrived to cover the Boer War in South Africa, equipped with cases of the stuff. Any thought he was an alcoholic was brushed aside because he was never seen drunk, and thrived on the stuff.
In 1917, newly arrived on the Western Front, he addressed his officers: “Remember, gentlemen, it’s not just France we are fighting for, it’s champagne.”
By the inter-war years at Chartwell, his country house in Kent, his daily routine included champagne served in a special silver tankard with his midday meal.
It seemed to be part of his DNA, rather than affecting it. Dinner commenced with more, and of all the bubbly on offer he gradually settled on Pol Roger, a manufacturer based in the French wine town of Épernay. The firm was intrigued that huge quantities had been bought since 1908 by one man. A little detective work revealed it was the “famous English politician, Churchill”. Thereafter, the champagne house reserved its 1928 vintage for his exclusive use. When this ran out, he moved on to 1935, then 1945 and, finally, the 1947 vintage.
When he became prime minister, unlike most predecessors or successors, Churchill relished the appointment. Modern scholarship now concludes this was partly because he knew his champagne and cigars – often partaken around dinner tables with friends and conversation, admittedly sometimes one-sided – were very efficient stress busters.
When he was composing his magnificent wartime speeches, often parading up and down dictating to secretaries, wrapped in his favourite Chinese silk dressing gown, on which crimson and gold dragons chased one another around his portly frame, it was champagne that helped him through those exhaustive years. Yet, the bubbles did more than that, for Churchill swore they inspired him. In tribute, after the Second World War, having taken up owning racehorses, Churchill named one of his steeds Pol Roger, which won at Kempton Park in 1953.
The company would later estimate Winston’s purchases of their reviving drink at 42,000 bottles.
He never visited the company’s famous headquarters, at 44 Avenue de Champagne, but proclaimed it “the most drinkable address in the world”.
On his death in 1965, aged 90, Pol Roger placed black-bordered labels on all their bottles shipped to the United Kingdom.
“So many bottles, so little time,” Churchill had mused. “I could not live without champagne. In victory I deserve it. In defeat I need it.”
Winston Churchill by Peter Caddick-Adams (Swift, £16.99) is out now.Visit expressbookshop.com or call Express Bookshop on 020 3176 3832. Free UK P&P on orders over £25
