VE Day Winston Churchill, Boris Johnson & cheese
Boris Johnson is keen on Churchillian comparisons and indeed has written a book about the war-time Tory leader. Churchill was not particularly admired (at best) in many parts of the left for reasons I wont go into here (I may post on what E P Thompson had to say about Churchill). One cant really argue however that he was a political leader and a comparison with Johnson suggests the current PM falling a very long way indeed short.
There are some peripheral comparisons which can be made however.
Johnson appears to like a drink although whether his drinking is of Churchillian quantities is not known. Both men also count as cheese lovers although even here Johnson probably comes off worse in the comparison.
Watching Saturday Kitchen Live (as one usually does not but times must) I was interested to note details of Churchill’s Cook book (Imperial War Museum 2015,still available). Churchill was of course not doing the cooking. He employed a distinguished female chef before and throughout the war, Georgina Landemere. The book contains her, extensive, recipes. Many are French cuisine focused, reflecting the ruling class food of choice that Raymond Postgate and the Good Food Guide were so keen to challenge from the 1950s on.
There is no mention of corned beef hash and if you were ever tempted to think that in World War Two people were all in it together a glance at the book will quickly tell you this was not the food people in the East End of London were eating.
I was interested to see what Churchill’s taste in the cheese department was and the answer quite clearly was Gruyere. This passage from the Londonist underlines the point.
The corpulent PM would regularly round off dinner with a cheese platter. And there was one London fromagarie he regarded above all others: “A gentleman only buys his cheese at Paxton & Whitfield,” said Churchill once. Fortunately for the gentlemen (and women) of today’s London, Paxton & Whitfield is still in business. So when you go in, what should you order — a ballsy cheddar? A patriotic Red Leicester? Apparently not. Although you might think the flavour was a tad on the neutral side for Winston, we have it on good authority that his cheese of choice was a Swiss gruyère.
What of Boris Johnson and cheese? There is no question that he likes it. He wrote in the Daily Telegraph (27th May 2004) of a tendency to midnight fridge raids for cheese.
More recently he has denounced vegan cheese as not being suitable for cheese lovers- perhaps fair enough but that’s not the same as saying its inedible or horrible-and at the Brexit dinner at 10 Downing St at the end of January canapes included Shropshire blue cheese and cheddar were served.
Perhaps Johnson is a little keener on British cheese than Churchill was but he doesn’t seem perhaps unsurprisingly to have a focus on a specific cheese. Anything will do it seems (provided its not vegan)
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