Private Life and Public Critics, 1918–29

Abstract

At the time of the Armistice in 1918 Churchill was already almost forty-four years old. When he ceased to be Chancellor of the Exchequer in June 1929, he could look back on ten years of hard work, punctuated by vigorous recreation of a type not usually persisted in by men in middle age. Physically, he changed relatively slowly: he already looked somewhat middle-aged before the war, for his hair had become rather thin and his figure was chubby. In this period his baldness increased, but what was left of his hair had not lost all its sandy colour. And exercise, in the form of polo, boar-hunting and even brick-laying helped to keep his weight down. He needed spectacles for reading and writing, but not for other purposes.