Hot baths, cold champagne, new peas and old brandy remain essentials
The menu, which sold at auction last week for £19,200, sets out a sturdy mid-Atlantic meal: tomato soup, steak and French fried potatoes, creamed corn, peach Melba and Pudding Princess (a recipe from Churchill's chef Mrs Landemare for individual sponge puddings with raspberry jam and custard). No accompanying wines are listed – Churchill seems for once to have adopted the American habit of drinking coffee with his meal.
It was an uncharacteristic lapse. Three decades earlier, having been demoted from First Sea Lord to Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster after the defeat at Gallipoli, he was spending the summer of 1915 at Hoe Farm, near Godalming. From there he wrote to his brother Jack, who was serving as a staff officer at Gallipoli: 'We live very simply – but with all the essentials of life well understood and provided for – hot baths, cold champagne, new peas and old brandy'.
It is an intriguing list, with its elegant stylistic balance of hot/cold, new/old; and the contrasting pairs of high luxury (champagne, old brandy) with the humbler pleasures of baths and peas. Inevitably one begins to wonder what today's politicians might list as 'the essentials of life'.
Of course they are all too stringently media-trained to do anything so rash as admit to a fondness for iced champagne or fine old Cognac. But over the years plenty of politicians have appeared on Desert Island Discs, and their luxury items offer a chink of insight into the private individual behind the public face.
Michael (now Lord) Howard revealed a Churchillian preoccupation with contemplative ablutions: the former Conservative leader chose a hot shower and some soap. Alcohol features, of course. David Cameron requested a crate of Scotch whisky (counting, perhaps, on being rescued before he had drunk it all); David Davis was cannier, combining foresight with fantasy by demanding a 'magic wine cellar that never runs out'.
Rory Stewart chose a ceramic bowl from the village of Istalif in Afghanistan – famous for its turquoise-glazed ceramics. Vince Cable wanted an Aston Martin – in the absence of roads on the island, he was presumably planning to park it on the lonely shore and sit in the driver's seat, going 'brrmmm, brrmmm'. Diane Abbott, most practical of the lot, opted for a 'nice bed with a comfortable mattress, sheets and mosquito net'.
In straightened times, compiling a short Churchillian list of essentials is an interesting exercise. What simple, life-enhancing items can one not do without?
I agree with Churchill about hot water and new peas (the marketing claim that frozen ones are just as good, if not better, is an egregious error). I'd add white cotton bed-linen, crisply ironed. And flowers – a modest bunch of daffodils or sweet peas is guaranteed to lift the heart on a dull day.
The BBC's own Brexit
The novelist Helen Dunmore used to begin her working day by turning on Radio 3. She admitted that 'my listening is of low quality' – but that is what makes Radio 3 such a good companion (the proper station, not the auditory valium that is Radio 3 Unwind). You can listen with half an ear until suddenly something comes on that rivets your attention for a minute or an hour, and opens a window on an unfamiliar new world.
Until now, those windows have opened in two directions. Music from across the world is broadcast to UK listeners, and in return the glories of British music-making – live concerts, the Proms, performances by the BBC New Generation artists – went out to a global audience.
But from this spring, international listeners will lose their access to BBC Sounds. Instead they must switch to an advertising-funded service, BBC.com, which offers a restricted range of programming.
Music stations, including Radio 3, will not be available, because of 'rights restrictions'. Meanwhile classical music stations in France, Italy, the US, Russia and elsewhere remain freely available to UK listeners.
The BBC's motto since 1927 is 'Nation shall speak peace unto Nation'. But no longer, alas, in the universal lingua franca that is music.
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