英国前首相丘吉尔的奇闻轶事_大学英语阅读

英国前首相丘吉尔的奇闻轶事

2. His White House Birthday Suit

Churchill apparently had several naked incidents while staying in the White House. On one occasion, he supposedly encountered the ghost of Abraham Lincoln while naked. They stared at each other for some time before Lincoln politely disappeared.

President Franklin Roosevelt also saw him naked, along with several White House staff during his 24-day visit in 1941. Churchill had just taken his bath and was pacing around in the nude when Roosevelt came in. The president quickly tried to leave, but Churchill told him not to, declaring that he clearly had nothing to hide from his closest ally .

This incident is somewhat controversial, since Churchill later insisted that he “never received the president without at least a bath towel” to cover himself. However, Churchill’s stenographer and bodyguard both claimed to have witnessed the incident and Roosevelt’s secretary said the president told her about it later, describing Churchill as “pink and white all over.” And Churchill himself once told King George VI that he was the only person on Earth to ever meet with a president naked.

3. The Two Winstons

Although it’s somewhat overshadowed by his political career, Winston Churchill was an accomplished writer. In fact, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953. His first book was The Story of the Malakand Field Force, a first-hand account of a military campaign in what is now Pakistan.