[Bessie Braddock MP: “Winston, you are drunk, and what’s more you are disgustingly drunk.”] Bessie, my dear, you are ugly, and what’s more, you are disgustingly ugly. But tomorrow I shall be sober and you will still be disgustingly ugly.

Anyone can rat, but it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to re-rat.

It’s worth knowing, though, that many quotes that people think are Churchill’s aren’t in fact his; many are incorrectly attributed to him probably because they ‘sound too good to be by...

Churchill had an incredibly quick mind, a sharp tongue and a very large vocabulary. He loved playing with words – creating new ones, adapting old ones – and using words to his advantage, quite often at the expense of others (although sometimes at his own, too!) Many of his speeches – and quotes from those speeches – are very well known, but his witticisms, , jokes and puns are perhaps less well recorded (or often misattributed). Churchill had a mischievous sense of wit. This couldn’t really be called ‘humour’; he wasn’t usually trying to be funny or make people laugh; nor did he tell bawdy or ribald jokes; this wasn’t in his nature. But he did enjoy the neatness and cleverness of a well-placed and carefully judged retort. He didn’t hesitate to use his particular talent with words on others. He had certain ‘sparring partners’ (as Richard Langworth puts it) who prompted him to fire off a quick riposte. Although these might have seemed off the cuff and spontaneous, they were generally carefully rehearsed, words carefully selected for punning potential, stored in his prodigious memory and then released on their unsuspecting recipient at the right moment. In 2013, he topped a poll of ‘history’s funniest insults’. Read more – and see the full list – . In the there’s a Churchill quote on nearly every page. As this journalist said, he’s the last word in political wit.

British Pathe film clip of ‘Some Chicken! Some Neck!’, 30 December 1941 Churchill made a brief trip to Canada to attend a meeting of the Canadian War Cabinet on 29 December,...