During the 1930s, as Adolf Hitler was rising to power in Germany, the man who would turn out to be his most implacable foe was drowning — in debt and champagne.
In 1936, Winston Churchill owed his wine merchant the equivalent of $75,000 in today’s money. He was also in hock to his shirt-maker, watchmaker and printer — but his sybaritic lifestyle, of a cigar-smoking, horse-owning country aristocrat, continued apace.
Stories of Churchill’s special relationship with alcohol are legendary. Eleanor Roosevelt, who was his host at the White House during World War II, was astonished “that anyone could smoke so much and drink so much and keep perfectly well.”
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