The great man usually drank in moderation. Bob Boothby, who studied such things closely, said he saw Churchill affected by liquor in the House of Commons only once. This was during the abdication crisis. When he returned at 2.30pm a bit sozzled from an embassy lunch, he broke the rules, asking supplementaries at Prime Minister's Questions, fell foul of the Speaker, and was howled down — the only time this happened to him in half a century of Commons service. He usually had a drink going from an early hour in the morning, but this was a very weak Scotch, sipped slowly and made to last hours. He avoided cocktails and was careful not to mix his drinks. He was fond of remarking, "I have taken more out of alcohol than it has taken out of me." 

Moderation, curiously enough, was also the note of his cigar-smoking, in the sense that while he normally had a cigar lit, he puffed it very little and inhaled the smoke scarcely at all. Advised by Dr Thomas Hunt (the gastroenterologist and my father-in-law) to use a cigar-holder, he devised instead what he called "belly bandoes". When waving the tip of his cigar at a candle, he "lovingly wrapped a piece of gummed brown paper around the other end" so that it "stopped the end from becoming too wet when I chew it." The belly bandoes limited direct contact with the tobacco and hence the amount of nicotine he absorbed.

In fact his cigars constantly went out, and had to be relit. For this purpose he used specially large matches, which remained lit after the sulphur had burned off, so that it did not contaminate the aroma or taste of the cigar, usually a Romeo y Julieta. These matches had two wicks, long and thick, made of cedarwood and sent specially from Canada. He gave me one in 1946, the first time, aged 17, I met him — it was a formidable piece of timber. 

Churchill realised, long before the First World War, that big cigars were part of his visual personality, and beloved of cartoonists, so he always displayed them, lighting and relighting them. But as Lord Beaverbook remarked, there was not much actual smoking: "Churchill smoked matches, and ate cigars," he recorded.

The last word on Churchill's acceptance of the good things in life was said by his old friend F.E. Smith: "He was easily satisfied with the best of everything, and the longer the better." But no one grudged him the best. Cita Stelzer prints a delightful photograph, taken at Cherbourg in 1944, showing a quintessentially comic French working- man leaning over the door of Churchill's car and using his cigarette lighter to get the old man's cigar going — a precious glimpse of the entente cordiale in action.