”Win­ston could not pos­si­bly be an alco­holic. No alco­holic could drink that much.” —C.P. Snow

Alcoholic rambles

Updates from 2009-2010. A read­er asks whether William Man­ches­ter was being fac­tu­al or just cute when he wrote that Churchill was not an alco­holic, despite the quan­ti­ties WSC is alleged to have con­sumed. Man­ches­ter wrote:

The leg­end that he is a heavy drinker is quite untrue. Churchill is a sen­si­ble if unortho­dox drinker. There is always some alco­hol in his blood­stream and it reach­es its peak in the evening after he has had two or three scotch­es, sev­er­al glass­es of cham­pagne, at least two brandies, and a highball.

Man­ches­ter was right in gen­er­al but wrong in the details. Churchill had an impres­sive capac­i­ty for alco­hol, but nobody saw him put that much away in one evening. Field Mar­shal Alan­brooke sev­er­al times wrote that the boss was plastered—but Brook­ie wrote a lot of bad-tem­pered things in his diary late at night when he was tired and frus­trat­ed from argu­ing over strategy.

A dearth of proof

None of his fam­i­ly or friends ever saw Churchill the worse for drink. Only once do we have reli­able tes­ti­mo­ny oth­er­wise: Dan­ny Man­der, one of his body­guards at Teheran, recalled escort­ing a well-lubri­cat­ed Churchill and Antho­ny Eden home after a lengthy series of toasts with the Rus­sians. Even then, Man­der was care­ful to note: “They were not ‘falling down drunk,’ just singing songs and feel­ing good.”

Churchill’s alco­holic intake was exag­ger­at­ed, not least by him­self. What­ev­er the amount, it was not enough to affect him. He began young. Until age twen­ty-five, he wrote in My Ear­ly Life, he had found whisky repug­nant.  Then in 1898, he joined the Malakand Field Force on India’s North­west Frontier:

[T]here was noth­ing to drink, apart from tea, except either tepid water or tepid water with lime juice or tepid water with whisky. Faced with these alter­na­tives I “grasped the larg­er hope.…” Wish­ing to fit myself for active-ser­vice con­di­tions I over­came the ordi­nary weak­ness­es of the flesh. By the end of these five days I had com­plete­ly over­come my repug­nance to the taste of whisky.*

*WSC, My Ear­ly Life (Lon­don: Thorn­ton But­ter­worth, 1930), 140-41.

“The Papa Cocktail”

Churchill nursed “a bit of whisky” dai­ly and for hours. His daugh­ter Mary once mixed for me what she called “The Papa Cock­tail.” You cov­er the bot­tom of a tum­bler with a thim­ble­ful of scotch, then fill it with water. Not even any ice! I thought the result was quite dis­gust­ing. (She agreed.) 

Churchill’s pri­vate  sec­re­tary, Jock Colville, referred to this con­coc­tion as “scotch-flavoured mouth­wash.” A glass of it was almost always at his elbow, sipped from time to time—giving out­siders the impres­sion that he was addicted. 

It is sim­ply not so. In his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, WSC is for once can­did on his drink­ing: “I had been brought up and trained to have the utmost con­tempt for peo­ple who got drunk—except on very excep­tion­al occa­sions and a few anniversaries.”

Exaggerations

Cer­tain­ly Churchill liked to fan his high capac­i­ty. A fre­quent dec­la­ra­tion was: “I have tak­en more out of alco­hol than alco­hol has tak­en out of me.” Ene­mies from Labour politi­cians to Nazi Pro­pa­gan­da Min­is­ter Goebbels took this to sug­gest a red-nosed drunk. Churchill was occa­sion­al­ly wont to play the role.

“Prof!” he often exclaimed to his sci­en­tif­ic advi­sor Fred­er­ick Lin­de­mann over din­ner. “Pray cal­cu­late the amount of cham­pagne, whisky and oth­er spir­its I have con­sumed in my life and tell me how high it would reach in this room.”

The Prof would take out his slide rule and pre­tend to cal­cu­late: “I’m sor­ry Win­ston, it would only come up to a few inch­es.” On cue Churchill would reply: “How much to do—how lit­tle time remains!”

Some who exag­ger­ate his drink­ing like to quote his famous encounter with Bessie Brad­dock MP. Accost­ing Churchill leav­ing the House of Com­mons, she claimed he was “dis­gust­ing­ly drunk.” Churchill retort­ed that Bessie was “dis­gust­ing­ly ugly….but tomor­row I shall be sober and you shall still be dis­gust­ing­ly ugly.”

His body­guard at the time, Ronald Gold­ing, told me this exchange actu­al­ly took place. But, he added, “Mr. Churchill was not drunk, just tired and wob­bly.” Nor was WSC’s response orig­i­nal. In the 1934 film It’s a Gift, the W. C. Fields char­ac­ter, when told he is drunk, responds: “Yeah, and you’re crazy. But I’ll be sober tomor­row and you’ll be crazy the rest of your life.”

A shunner of pipes?

A read­er sent me a Dai­ly Tele­graph arti­cle stat­ing that Churchill occa­sion­al­ly smoked a pipe as a break from cig­ars: “I can find no ref­er­ence to him hav­ing ever smoked a pipe—can you?” I cannot.

I think the Tele­graph sto­ry is a stretch. There is no tes­ti­mo­ny to Churchill ever smok­ing a pipe. There are indi­ca­tions that he deplored pipe smok­ing (though he tol­er­at­ed it from Sir Arthur Ted­der). Some believe this arose through his antipa­thy (which grew in the ear­ly 1930s) to Prime Min­is­ter Stan­ley Baldwin.

By look­ing for Bald­win ref­er­ences, I found a key cig­ar-and-pipe stand­off between Churchill and “SB” in 1924, when they were on bet­ter terms, in Mar­tin Gilbert‘s Win­ston S. Churchill, vol. 5, page 59 quot­ing Churchill (from an unpub­lished note) after the 1924 gen­er­al elec­tion. Bald­win was form­ing his new Con­ser­v­a­tive government:

I was shown into the Prime Minister’s office. After a few com­mon­places I asked him whether he mind­ed the smoke of a cig­ar. He said “No,” and pulled out his famous pipe. Then he said “Are you will­ing to help us?” I replied guard­ed­ly, “Yes, if you real­ly want me.”

I had no inten­tion of join­ing the Gov­ern­ment except in some great posi­tion, and I had no idea—nor had any­one else—what was in his mind. So when he said, “Will you be Chan­cel­lor of the Exche­quer?” I was aston­ished. I had nev­er dreamed my cred­it with him stood so high…. I should have liked to have answered, “Will the bloody duck swim?” but as it was a for­mal and impor­tant con­ver­sa­tion I replied, “This ful­fils my ambition….”

Undoubt­ed­ly at that point, Churchill would have hap­pi­ly smoked Baldwin’s pipe himself.

What about cigarettes?

There are indi­ca­tions that he deplored Vir­ginia cig­a­rettes, though he smoked stronger cig­a­rettes ear­ly in his youth and at least once lat­er. I was a proof­read­er for Paul Reid’s Defend­er of the Realm 1940-1965, the third vol­ume of The Last Lion. In it I found the first ref­er­ence to Churchill smok­ing cigarettes.

Paul cit­ed a com­ment by Jock Colville from 1943, after WSC had met with Turk­ish Pres­i­dent İnönü. Despite mutu­al cor­dial­i­ty, İnönü had refused to enter the war. Colville found WSC puff­ing a Turk­ish cigarette—the only time he’d ever been seen with with one. Ges­tic­u­lat­ing with it, Churchill said, “It’s the only thing I ever got from the Turks.”

Further reading

Michael McMe­namin, “The Myth of Churchill and Alco­hol: A Dis­tor­tion of the Record,” 2018. This is the most com­pre­hen­sive arti­cle I have encoun­tered on the sub­ject. Next to the Ben­gal Famine, it draws the most read­er com­ment on the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project.

“The Alco­hol Question—Again,” 2011.

“Churchill the Drunk. Or: Fas­ten Seat­belts on Bar Stools,” 2022.

“Memo to Peg­gy Noo­nan: Churchill Was Not a Drunk,” 2019.

“Churchill’s Mag­na­nim­i­ty: Stan­ley Bald­win,” 2021.