Brewed for Winston Churchill to thank him for the liberation of Denmark in particular and Western Europe in general.
He's the rare example of a good Tory. Was in the govt that gave us the people's budget and Parl Act and had Spesh brewed for him.
we could always forget his terrible racism, in particular the Indians.
he also took gifts and cash from private businesses in return for influence in the UK political scene.
in short, he was just like modern politicians. Except the politicians around nowadays don't get sickly, over-strength lagers made for them.
It seems harsh to define him as racist. He was an Edwardian, maybe even Victorian gentleman; his views on race were on the liberal side of prevailing attitudes.
I've considered Winston at some length and have come to the conclusion that, overall, he was pretty alright.
There an extreme sect of Hindus. Think sort of puritan. There's even one lot that **** corpses so they don't get turned on, forcing them to think about Shiva as opposed to the rotting corpse their knobbing.
But the normal sadhus are sound. When I bathed in the Ganga at Varanasi, one came up to me from nowhere when I'd got out, made the trident sign on my head in ash and just buggered off. I actually felt rather honoured. Most tourists won't bathe there, what with the half burned corpses from dead people that couldn't afford enough wood for the funeral pyre but didn't want to skimp on the electric cremation.
But up in Himachal, the sadhus you meet are often westernised. They'll all Brahmins, obviously (priest caste init) so they'll go to university to make their parents happy, having grown up speaking English as well as Bengali or Hindi at home, but will then feel the call of the mountains and the desire to pursue a spiritual path.
So you can chat about politics, economics, philosophy etc with them. And they're really chilled, what with being middle class, educated Hindu hippies stoned off their trolley on the best puff on the planet.
It's meeting these ones that gets people like me and the Beatles into it all. You think they're the good ones and tend to ignore the huge numbers of normal non-sadhu Hindus who support the Hindutva nazis and burn Muslims and untouchables whenever they get the chance.
Oh, he was an anti-Indian racist, C.
As you say, a lot of his class were. But a lot who had been there, whether George Orwell or Douglas Jardine loved the place.
He just hated the fact that they wanted independence and without India our empire, which he loved, was pointless.
As you say, he was a Victorian. But there were lots of Indophile Victorians just like there were lots of racist ones.
Spoken like a true Blairite, sir. Untroubled by such trifles as sending in troops and tanks against workers.
Quite an interesting summary of WC's controversies here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-29701767
Fairly balanced, but with the pro-Churchill voices somehow always having the last word.