A hollow leg: How did Winston Churchill drink all that wine?

A look at the myths surrounding Churchill’s drinking

What better time to discuss Winston Churchill, as the British government and its ruling Conservative Party engage in a variety of face slaps, eye gouges and yuk yuks – none of which are even remotely funny,

Churchill, for all of his failings (and he had them, including a blind spot towards giving women the vote), usually realized his mistakes, rarely held a grudge, and rallied the world to stop Adolf Hitler. So yes, much more than a head of lettuce.

And, as we have noted on the blog, Churchill loved wine. This is worth writing about again because a couple of social media types recently tried to recreate a Churchill drinking day and got past sloppy. This was followed up Ayun Halliday on the Open Culture blog, who did a bit more research but came to the same conclusion: How could Churchill stop the Nazis when he was smashed all of the time?

Which, of course, he wasn’t. The point here is not to decide whether Churchill was an alcoholic; Andrew Roberts, a leading biographer, says he probably wasn’t, and medical opinion tends to agree. And this is not about making sport of the myth to get a few giggles.

Rather, it’s to note two things:

First, that we look at Churchill’s drinking through the prism of the last 20 years, when wine with dinner has been turned into binge drinking and when drinking any alcohol, according to the experts, is part of a “Reefer Madness” lifestyle. After all, don’t I suffer from “alcohol use disorder?” So anyone who has a cocktail before dinner, drinks wine with dinner, and then has brandy afterwards – as Churchill did routinely — must attend the nearest Alcoholics Anonymous meeting immediately. Or else.

Second, much of the evidence supporting Churchill’s mythic drinking is hardly convincing. Halliday quotes a prodigious liquor list from one day in March 1937. What she doesn’t seem to understand is that the tally comes from Chartwell, Churchill’s country residence, where he not only entertained but where several members of his family usually stayed with him. So to assume that he drank all of that booze is silly.

In addition, Churchill ate meals – courses and courses of them that took hours and hours. He grew up as an upper class Victorian, and that was what upper class Victorians did. Remember Mrs. Bridges? So drinking wine with dinner over two or three hours is much different than two glasses of 14.5 percent red with a 15-minute takeout sandwich – a popular 21^st century American dinner.

So yes, Churchill drank. Who knew, all those years ago, that it would turn into such a big deal today?