溫斯頓?丘吉爾是最受民眾愛戴的英國首相之一，人們最熟知的莫過于他那叼著雪茄的形象。除了這些，你對他的了解還有多少呢？這位偉人有沒有哪些會令你大吃一驚的故事呢？

By Elizabeth S. Anderson

凡路 選 侯靜雯 注

Winston Churchill is probably the most popular British prime minister ever. Having served his country as a soldier and politician, he is often considered among the greatest of Britons. But while his heroic stand against the Nazis is well known, there are still a few facts about the popular politician that might surprise you.

1．His Cigars

The classic image of Winston Churchill includes a giant cigar stuck between his lips. Churchill developed his love of cigars as a young man, when he traveled to Cuba to report on an ongoing rebellion against the colonial Spanish government. For the rest of his life, he smoked eight or nine cigars every day. However, he almost never took a puff , preferring to chew on the end until it went out, then relight it and start again. To prevent the cigar from becoming soggy, Churchill invented the “bellybando,” a strip of brown paper which could be glued around the end.

At any given time, Churchill had 3,000 to 4,000 cigars in his house, mostly his favorite Romeo & Juliet brand. The cigars were kept in boxes labeled “l(fā)arge” or “small” and “wrapped” or “naked.” They were mostly gifts, which helped keep expenses down. (One of his servants observed that “in two days his cigar consumption was the equivalent of my weekly salary.”) On one occasion, the president of Cuba presented Churchill with 2,400 top-quality cigars, although his paranoid security team insisted that one cigar from each box be sent off and tested for poison. Perhaps the story that best illustrates his love of cigars occurred during World War II, when he had a special oxygen mask designed so that he could still smoke his cigar on an unpressurized, high-altitude flight.

2. His White House Birthday Suit

Churchill apparently had several naked incidents while staying in the White House. On one occasion, he supposedly encountered the ghost of Abraham Lincoln while naked. They stared at each other for some time before Lincoln politely disappeared.

President Franklin Roosevelt also saw him naked, along with several White House staff during his 24-day visit in 1941. Churchill had just taken his bath and was pacing around in the nude when Roosevelt came in. The president quickly tried to leave, but Churchill told him not to, declaring that he clearly had nothing to hide from his closest ally .

This incident is somewhat controversial, since Churchill later insisted that he “never received the president without at least a bath towel” to cover himself. However, Churchill’s stenographer and bodyguard both claimed to have witnessed the incident and Roosevelt’s secretary said the president told her about it later, describing Churchill as “pink and white all over.” And Churchill himself once told King George VI that he was the only person on Earth to ever meet with a president naked.

3. The Two Winstons

Although it’s somewhat overshadowed by his political career, Winston Churchill was an accomplished writer. In fact, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953. His first book was The Story of the Malakand Field Force, a first-hand account of a military campaign in what is now Pakistan.

Funnily enough, there was another writer named Winston Churchill who was active at the same time. This Winston Churchill was an American who wrote a number of novels, six or seven of which became huge bestsellers. These included Richard Carvel, described as “a serious historical novel, embracing a romantic courtship and many events on land and sea,” which sold an astonishing two million copies and made the author a rich man.

Interestingly, both Churchills published their first books in 1898, although the American Churchill was the first to become famous for his writing. Unsurprisingly, he would eventually be eclipsed by the fame of his British counterpart and is almost forgotten today. But at the time, the two writers were often confused with each other. To avoid further difficulty, the two Churchills eventually agreed that the British Churchill would publish as “Winston S. Churchill” while the American would simply go by “Winston Churchill.”

4. The Accident That Almost Killed Him

In December 1931, Churchill was on a late-night visit to his friend Bernard Baruch in New York when he had a brush with death. While crossing the street, he was hit by a car, which then dragged him behind it for a short distance. As it turned out, Churchill had instinctively looked to the right when he wanted to cross. However, since cars drive on opposite sides of the road in America and Britain, he should actually have looked left. Instead, he stepped serenely into the path of an oncoming car.

Churchill sustained severe bruising on his chest and a sprained shoulder. He played down the severity of the injuries, writing that he couldn’t understand “why I was not broken like an eggshell or squashed like a gooseberry.” He also accepted all the blame for the accident, informing the police that the driver was innocent and securing his release. Since the accident occurred during Prohibition, Churchill managed to talk his doctor into writing him a note asserting that “the post-accident concussion of Hon. Winston S. Churchill necessitates the use of alcoholic spirits, especially at meal times.”

5. His Black Dog

Throughout his life, Churchill probably suffered from manic depression , which he called his “black dog.” At times, his depression was so severe that he didn’t like standing close to a passing train or looking at the ocean from a ship because he feared he would be tempted to commit suicide. His close friend Lord Beaverbrook once said that he was always either “at the top of the wheel of confidence or at the bottom of an intense depression.”

During his bouts of depression, Churchill would almost cease to function, spending a great deal of time in bed and losing his appetite and ability to concentrate. When he recovered from one such bout, he memorably described how “all the colors come back into the picture.”

When not depressed, Churchill was famously full of energy, usually working and talking until the early hours of the morning. He bounced constantly from one topic to another, causing Roosevelt to quip that he “has a thousand ideas a day, four of which are good.” In fairness, Roosevelt knew Churchill best during the later years of the war, when his doctor had taken to prescribing him amphetamines in order to avoid any depressive episodes, which didn’t help his manic tendencies.

6. His Quotes

The great quotes of Winston Churchill have filled entire books. Unfortunately, many of the quotes attributed to him just aren’t true. For instance, Nancy Astor is often said to have told him “If I were your wife I would put poison in your coffee,” to which Churchill replied “If I were married to you, I’d drink it.” The incident did happen, but Churchill wasn’t involved at all. Instead, his good friend Lord Birkenhead delivered the reply.

Churchill did have a run-in with Astor, herself a great wit and the first female British Member of Parliament, but it was rather less quotable. Apparently, Churchill complained that he “felt when you entered the House of Commons that a woman had entered my bathroom and I had nothing to protect myself with but the sponge” to which Astor replied “Would it never occur to you that your appalling appearance might have been protection enough?”

Churchill couldn’t really complain about Astor’s rudeness, since he genuinely did respond to another female MP accusing him of being drunk with “Madam, you are ugly and I will be sober in the morning.” However, he probably didn’t say that “Americans will always do the right thing, after they have tried everything else” or tell a civil servant bemoaning prepositions at the end of sentences that “this is the kind of English up with which I will not put.” And both Churchill and George Bernard Shaw denied the famous story in which Shaw sent Churchill two tickets to his new play and invited him to “bring a friend, if you have one” only for Churchill to reply that he would come on the second night “if there is one.”

However, Churchill fans shouldn’t despair just yet. It most likely is true that Churchill was in the toilet when an aide informed him that the Lord Privy Seal had arrived to see him, prompting the memorable instruction to “tell the Lord Privy Seal that I am sealed in the privy and can only deal with one s–t at a time.”

Vocabulary

1. Winston Churchill: 溫斯頓?丘吉爾（1874—1965），英國政治家、演說家、作家，曾兩度出任英國首相，被認(rèn)為是20世紀(jì)最重要的政治領(lǐng)袖之一。

2. prime minister: 首相，總理。

3. politician: 政治家；Briton: 英國人。

4. heroic: 英勇的；stand: 態(tài)度，立場；Nazi: 納粹分子。

5. Cuba: 古巴，北美洲國家；ongoing: 持續(xù)的，正在進(jìn)行的；rebellion: 造反，反抗；colonial: 殖民地的。

6. puff: 噴（煙等）。

7. soggy: 濕軟的；strip: 帶，條；brown paper: 牛皮紙。

8. label: 給……貼標(biāo)簽；wrapped: 有包裝的。

9. equivalent: 等價物。

10. paranoid: 多疑的。

11. 二戰(zhàn)期間，丘吉爾還特制了一種氧氣面罩，使他在高空非增壓艙時仍可以抽雪茄。這或許是證明丘吉爾對雪茄癡迷程度的最好例子了。illustrate: （用事例、圖表等）解釋，說明；oxygen mask: 氧氣面罩；altitude: 海拔，高度。

12. birthday suit: 一絲不掛，赤身裸體。

13. supposedly: 據(jù)稱，可能；encounter: 遇到；Abraham Lincoln: 亞伯拉罕?林肯（1809—1865），美國第16任總統(tǒng)。

14. Franklin Roosevelt: 富蘭克林?羅斯福（1882—1945），美國第32任總統(tǒng)。

15. in the nude: 赤身裸體地。

16. ally: 同盟者，同盟。

17. controversial: 有爭議的；receive: 接待，會見。

18. stenographer: 速記員。

19. King George VI: 喬治六世（1895—1952），是現(xiàn)任英國女王伊麗莎白二世的父親。

20. overshadow: 使相形見絀；accomplished: 才華橫溢的，技藝高超的。

21. The Story of the Malakand Field Force: 《馬拉坎德野戰(zhàn)軍紀(jì)實》，丘吉爾的第一部著作，于1898年在英國出版；first-hand: 第一手的，親身的；account: 描述，敘述。

22. embrace: 包括，包含；courtship: 求愛期，戀愛期；astonishing: 驚人的。

23. eclipse: 使黯然失色；counterpart: 對應(yīng)的人（或物）。

24. Bernard Baruch: 伯納德?巴魯克（1870—1965），美國政治家、金融家、投資大師；a brush with death: 與死神擦肩而過。

25. as it turns out: 事實證明；instinctively: 本能地，直覺地。

26. serenely: 平靜地，沉著地。

27. bruising: 清淤，擦傷；sprained: 扭傷的。

28. play sth. down: 淡化，降低（重要性）；eggshell: 蛋殼；squash: 壓碎，壓扁；gooseberry: 醋栗。

29. innocent: 無辜的，無罪的。

30. 因為事故發(fā)生在禁酒時期，丘吉爾設(shè)法說服他的醫(yī)生把他的報告寫成“溫斯頓?丘吉爾閣下事故后出現(xiàn)腦震蕩，需要飲用烈性酒，尤其是用餐的時候”。Prohibition: 禁酒時期，指美國歷史上一段推行全國性禁酒的時期，從1920年開始至1933年結(jié)束；concussion: 腦震蕩；Hon.: 即Honourable，尊敬的；necessitate: 使成為必要；spirit: 烈性酒。

31. manic depression: 躁郁癥。

32. be tempted to do: （使）很想做。

33. Lord Beaverbrook: 比弗布魯克勛爵，指威廉?馬克斯韋爾?艾特（William Maxwell Aitken）（1879—1964），英國政治家、報業(yè)大亨，1940年任丘吉爾內(nèi)閣的飛機生產(chǎn)大臣。

34. bout: （疾病或感情的）發(fā)作；cease: 結(jié)束，停止。

35. quip: 說俏皮話。

36. prescribe: 開藥，為……開處方；amphetamine: 安非他明，苯丙胺（一種藥物，可增強體力和興奮度，減少饑餓感）；episode: （某疾病的）發(fā)作期。

37. quote: 引語，語錄。

38. attribute sth. to sb.: 認(rèn)為……出自（某人）。

39. Nancy Astor: 南希?阿斯特（1879—1964），英國下議院第一位女議員。

40. run-in: 爭執(zhí)，爭論；wit: 機智風(fēng)趣的人；Member of Parliament: 下議院議員，也寫作MP。

41. House of Commons: （英國議會中的）下議院；sponge: 海綿；appalling: 令人恐懼的，使人震驚的。

42. accuse sb. (of sth.): 譴責(zé)，控訴；sober: 清醒的，嚴(yán)肅的。

43. civil servant: 公務(wù)員，文職人員；bemoan: 哀怨，悲嘆；preposition: 介詞；put up with: 忍受。

44. George Bernard Shaw: 蕭伯納（1856—1950），愛爾蘭劇作家。

45. Lord Privy Seal: （英國的）掌璽大臣，privy意為“參與機密的”，后文為名詞，指“廁所”，seal意為“璽，印章”，后文為動詞，指“封閉，密封”；prompt: 導(dǎo)致，促使。

（來源：英語學(xué)習(xí)雜志 編輯：丹妮）