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Articles
Sander and Langer Take us Out for Drinks
- By DAVE TURRELL
- | February 20, 2023
- Category: Books
Gin Sander and Roxanne Langer, Winston Churchill: A Drinking Life, New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2022, 158 pages, $22.99, Amazon $19.99, Kindle $16.99
We read it so you don’t have to
I approached this book with a feeling of pleasant anticipation, wanting to like it. At last, the title suggests, comes a rational examination of Churchill’s relationship with alcohol. That would have been a refreshing change to the ever-increasing stream of uneducated claptrap about alcoholic racism, racist alcoholism or colonialist dipsomania, depending on the day of the week. Gin Sander and Roxanne Langer certainly offer something different. But from a Churchillian perspective, it’s far from refreshing or educational.
The book is well-intentioned and attempts a light-hearted romp through Churchill’s lifelong relationship with the Demon Drink. Sander and Langer have a deep background in “lifestyle” and alcohol, but, sadly, not with Churchill. The book is written in a breezy, bubble-headed style which, unfortunately, perfectly matches the content.
One problem may be that the authors, deciding to write a drinks book with Churchill as focus, realized late in the game that his drinking tastes were really rather pedestrian. This is a problem when you want to write a cocktail book. The result is a flop—another offering that mainly uses Churchill’s name in order to sell copies. It is not a book about Sir Winston and his drinking. It is a book about drinks and about name dropping, with references to Churchill shoe-horned in where possible.
A cacophony of errors
Drinks are included whether Churchill liked them or not—to their credit, the authors make no attempt to conceal this. Theirs is a book about the drinks, not Churchill. The Churchill content is irrelevant, superficial or incorrect, sometimes all three. Sander and Langer use tired, shop-worn anecdotes that have been better collected elsewhere. We are twice regaled with the story of Nancy Astor offering to poison Churchill’s coffee (although in one version it isn’t coffee but tea). The bare minimal research would have shown found that exchange to have been between Astor and F.E. Smith.
I have not taken the time to verify all of the quotations. If the authors’ main source was the Internet, then many of them will feature in Richard Langworth’s invaluable list of non-quotes. But quotes aside, the book contains its fair share of other errors. Three examples:
“Churchill didn’t actually go to Eton. He attended Harrow and Gordonstoun.” Harrow, yes, Gordonstoun no. That was King Charles.
“A copy of Live and Let Live that [Ian Fleming] signed and presented to Churchill sold for close to two hundred thousand pounds.” More likely it was a copy of Live and Let Die.
“[A] long association with Churchill included a morning in May 1939 when [Jock Colville] arrived early at Admiralty House and discovered the PM ‘dressed in the most brilliant of flowery dressing gowns.’” May 1939 – Admiralty House – PM: if one of those is factual, the other two are not.
The partly-essential…
The first chapter, “What He Liked to Drink,” is the only one that approaches what this book could have been. There are individual mini-essays on champagne, whisky, brandy, cognac, wine and port—his favorite tipples. But then we read essays on gin and rum even though, as Sander and Langer admit, he rarely touched them.
Chapter 2, “With Whom He Liked to Drink,” contains sketchy paragraphs on famous Churchill friends and relations. Of his mother we are told he “didn’t get the chance to share a drink with her as often as he’d have liked.” An entry for The Duke of Westminster does not mention alcohol. Based on a “fleeting meeting” with Mark Twain, “we can only assume that they drank in each other’s presence.” Joseph Kennedy “was a teetotaler,” write Sander and Langer, “although he certainly approved of other people drinking.”
And so on, all with the same level of detail and research. The high spot in the chapter, which has nothing to do with Churchill, notes that Franklin Roosevelt, on signing the 21st Amendment ending Prohibition, quipped, “I believe this would be a good time for a beer.” (If FDR didn’t say it, he should have.)
Chapter 3, “Where He Liked to Drink,” is similarly light. Of “Dukes” in London “there is not much of a paper trail of the time Churchill spent here, he was known to swing by the hotel on occasion.” Chartwell is noted because it contained two early examples of the refrigerator: “How else could one keep one’s white wine and Champagne sufficiently chilled?” A list of six of Churchill’s favorite hotels is short by at least a dozen.
…and the non-essential
Chapter 4 drags in truly spectacular irrelevance. Having assured us on several occasions that Churchill rarely drank cocktails, Sander and Langer now treat us to 40 pages of cocktail recipes. Some are classics, some post-Churchill, and some are made up. Churchill’s association is superficial. The Manhattan was allegedly created at a New York party by Winston’s mother. The word “allegedly” does a lot of work here since, as the authors cheerfully admit, she was pregnant and in France at the time.
Chapter 5, “Why This Still Matters,” offers a stellar opportunity for redemption, because it does still matter. In an age when Churchill’s drinking has been turned from an incidental to a weapon of outrage, his actual consumption of alcohol should be on record. But redemption eludes the authors. Their first question is, “Was he a spendthrift?” Irrelevant or not, they leave the question unanswered (but Lady Randolph spent a lot as well). The second question, “Was he a drunk?” is dismissed in a couple of sentences. There are few first-hand reports of his being drunk, but two British doctor-historians say he was not.
Finally we get to whether it matters. Auction prices of Churchill’s slippers, brandy glass, and paintings are all brought into evidence to demonstrate that WSC is still in the public eye. Why? ask Sander and Langer. “Because heroes are what we seek.” Maybe, but you won’t find them in a list of cocktail recipes.
Final word
A friendly if gratuitous word of advice. If you are going to use a famous name to improve the selling potential of your book, at least do some basic research to get that famous name correct. Hint: in this case, it’s not “Winston Lawrence Spencer Churchill” (pages 5, 66, 128). This is inaccuracy on an industrial scale.
We are told in the acknowledgments section: “Researching and writing any book is hard; Researching and writing a book while much of the known world is shut down in a pandemic required great creativity and imagination.” We noticed.
The author
Dave Turrell is happily retired from a lifetime career in Information Technology. He is a longtime Churchill bibliophile and collector, and is proud to have been a deputy editor of Finest Hour. His days are spent in arranging his books on his own plan and, even on the rare occasions where he cannot be friends with them, he is at least content to make their acquaintance.