Month: August 2009

Was Churchill an Alcoholic?

Was Churchill an Alcoholic?

The ques­tion fre­quent­ly aris­es, was Churchill an alco­holic? Cer­tain­ly his own accounts of his prowess (“I have tak­en more out of alco­hol than alco­hol has tak­en out of me”), and his fre­quent depic­tion as a red-nosed drunk by ene­mies from Goebbels to mod­ern­day scoffers, lends one to believe that he drank heavily.

The truth, as Richard Geshke puts it in a com­mu­ni­ca­tion on ChurchillChat, is that he was “a con­stant sip­per: “I nev­er heard any sto­ries of a drunk Churchill.”

There is just one val­i­dat­ed sto­ry: Dan­ny Man­der, one of WSC’s body­guards at Teheran, recalls escort­ing a well-lubri­cat­ed Churchill and Antho­ny Eden home after a lengthy series of toasts with the Rus­sians.…

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“Duly Inscribed” by Winston Churchill

“Duly Inscribed” by Winston Churchill

I have a first Amer­i­can edi­tion of Churchill’s Boer war book, Lon­don toLady­smith via Pre­to­ria (New York: Long­mans Green, 1900, now part of The Boer War).On the inside cov­er, there is a label with a sig­na­ture of Win­ston Churchill.Do you think that it is an orig­i­nal sig­na­ture or is it a label that was print­ed in quan­ti­ties? —L.C., Que­bec, Canada

The first line reads, “duly Inscribed” and the sig­na­ture looks like his (suit­ably aged ink), but I have nev­er encoun­tered “duly Inscribed” on anoth­er book signed by Churchill. How­ev­er, since this is a card obvi­ous­ly past­ed in, I sup­pose it’s possible.…

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Vonage: Don’t Let This Happen to You

Vonage: Don’t Let This Happen to You

In May 2009, we signed up with Von­age in order to escape the greedy clutch­es of our local tele­phone provider, Fair Point Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, which charges out­ra­geous prices for turn­ing our phones on and off while we are away, and a large pre­mi­um for “wide area” dial­ing any­where out­side one sliv­er of Car­roll Coun­ty, New Hamp­shire. My advice is: the dev­il you know is bet­ter than the dev­il you don’t.

It seemed so easy. Von­age quick­ly signed us up for $9.95 a month for three months and then only $25 a month for free calls to every­where but Mars, and sent a $25 modem which they want­ed us to plug into our sys­tem.…

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