Picture: The Guardian
Nigel Farage smoking a cigar no doubt sees himself as Churchillian. However the right does not have a monopoly on cigar smoking. Engels was also an enthusiast
A footnote relating to Engels life as a bon viveur, as Tristram Hunt would have it.
This though is a piece of trivia that Hunt missed in his biography of Engels.
The great beard wearer was (of course) fond of Cuban cigars but developed an aversion to some of the best quality produced.
In a letter from London written on 21st May 1887 to Laura Lafargue in Paris, Engels explained why:
My eye is considerably better since I have taken to smoke different cigars. There was the determining cause of the whole affair. You may laugh but I shall as soon as I have time to explain to Paul (Lafargue) medicinally that the thing was entirely caused by applying too much guano to the tobacco fields of the Vuelta Abajo.
Vuelta Abajo is a tobacco growing area of Cuba. Guano is no longer used
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vuelta_Abajo
Guano was big business in Victorian times and there was a guano war between Spain, Peru and Chile in 1864
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