Winston Churchill: The Original Cigar Aficionado

In war or peace, Winston Churchill's cigars were never far from his hand. It was in the Caribbean that Churchill's cigar smoking began in earnest. Having arrived in Havana in November 1895, along with a fellow officer named Reginald Barnes, and having been stood up at the docks by the Spanish commandant who was to have met the two men, Churchill and Barnes took a room at one of the best hotels in town and spent the next several days living off of little more than two of the local specialties, oranges and cigars. From that point on, Churchill favored Cuban cigars above all others.

Perhaps no political figure is more readily associated with the enthusiastic and regular enjoyment of cigars than Churchill. Few informal photographs show him without one. And when a London cartoonist depicted Churchill as a tommy gun-toting gangster, he dubbed him "Cigarface." So integral was the cigar to everyone's image of Churchill, that a jesting King George VI was once able to have some fun at the expense of a few English pottery manufacturers who made ceramic toby jug likenesses of Churchill smoking his trademark cigar.

We proudly present to you Churchill's great-grandson, Randolph, as he tells the story of what cigars mean to WSC.