Churchill’s eating, drinking and smoking habits were part of his persona, especially in later years. They showed in his fatness and that ever-present cigar; but rather less in his deportment, which nearly everyone who knew him expressed surprise was not more affected by his consumption of alcohol. Hitler described him as a ‘superannuated drunkard supported by Jewish gold’; but he of course didn’t know him personally. Hitler’s reputation (at least) was very different: abstemious, teetotal, vegetarian, not known to enthuse much over the good things in life. It is tempting to speculate what effect this might have had on their respective characters. As the punning philosopher put it, ‘Man ist was er isst’ (People are what they eat). In that case Churchill was plain cooking, whisky, champagne and the best Havana cigar smoke; and all that these might be taken to imply.

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Churchill’s drinking revealed his international side more. He doesn’t seem to have been a beer man. He liked French wines, especially champagne (Pol Roger for preference), which he drank to what most of us would regard as excess; plus Cognac, and Scotch whisky (Johnnie Walker Black Label): ‘the main basic standing refreshment of the white officer in the East’, as he called it. So that could be said to reflect his imperialism. It’s the whisky and brandy that made people suspect him of tipsiness (he started at breakfast); but in fact he nearly always drank them heavily diluted – really no more than a ‘mouthwash’, was how his private secretary described it; and in general it seems clear that he could ‘hold his liquor’, as the saying went. He reckoned it ‘quickened his intellect’.