{"id":35131,"date":"2018-01-29T01:00:01","date_gmt":"2018-01-29T06:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=35131"},"modified":"2018-01-09T09:17:15","modified_gmt":"2018-01-09T14:17:15","slug":"qotd-churchills-drinking-habits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/01\/29\/qotd-churchills-drinking-habits\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Churchill&#8217;s drinking habits"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>In the not so distant past around the sodden precincts of Westminster you were as likely to spot a yeti as a sober politician. The level of drinking that went on among MPs and their leeches for most of the last century was prodigious and was by and large expected. It was, as Ben Wright describes in his breezy, anecdote-rich and instructive survey of booze and politics, part of a culture which was tolerated and, to a degree, encouraged.<\/p>\n<p>It was not without justification, for instance, that Adolf Hitler, who might have been a nicer fellow had he not been a teetotaller, described Winston Churchill as an \u201cinsane drunkard\u201d, a \u201cgarrulous drunkard\u201d, and \u201cwhisky-happy\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>If <em>Order, Order!<\/em> has a star it is undoubtedly Churchill who rarely let a day go by able to pass a breathalyser test. On occasion he would have a glass of wine at breakfast followed by a liquid lunch which invariably included Champagne and brandy. At tea-time he would progress to whisky. Then he would wash down dinner with more Champagne and brandy after which he had at least another whisky. According to one loyal aide who may have been sight impaired he was never the worse for wear for this intake and he \u201cnever felt the slightest ill-effects in the morning\u201d. <\/p>\n<p>Alan Taylor, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thenational.scot\/culture\/lush-tales-of-our-political-classes-drinking-exploits\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Lush tales of our political classes\u2019 drinking exploits&#8221;, <em>The National<\/em><\/a>, 2016-06-20.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the not so distant past around the sodden precincts of Westminster you were as likely to spot a yeti as a sober politician. The level of drinking that went on among MPs and their leeches for most of the last century was prodigious and was by and large expected. It was, as Ben Wright [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,4,53,41],"tags":[104,969,458,864],"class_list":["post-35131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-britain","category-politics","category-quotations","tag-booze","tag-hitler","tag-parliament","tag-winstonchurchill"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-98D","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35131"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35132,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35131\/revisions\/35132"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}