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Despite Winston Churchill’s popular image, Britain’s most celebrated statesman spent much of his seemingly extravagant life on the edge of a financial cliff,\u00a0according<\/a>\u00a0to retired banker and Oxford history scholar David Lough<\/a>.<\/p>\n In Lough’s\u00a0“No More Champagne: Churchill and His Money<\/a>,” he outlines how<\/span> Churchill flirted with severe debt while projecting an image of wealth, with his limitless appetite for cigars and champagne.<\/p>\n Churchill’s private finances often threatened his political career, which spanned more than a half century, including two stints as prime minister.<\/p>\n To compensate for his financial woes, Churchill focused on becoming a\u00a0prolific writer; however, his prose wasn’t enough on its own, Lough notes<\/a>.<\/p>\n So Churchill took an\u00a0emergency bank loan, which brought his borrowings to \u00a330,000 in 1925, or $2.1 million at current exchange rates and adjusting for inflation (inflation multiples: UK\u00a3 x 50)<\/span>.<\/p>\n Feeling the financial pinch,\u00a0Churchill\u00a0made several budget cuts to Chartwell<\/a>, his country estate, in the summer of 1926.<\/p>\n He began by selling\u00a0all of the cattle, chickens, pigs, and ponies housed on the estate.<\/p>\n Churchill cut\u00a0the estate’s\u00a0monthly expenses, which cost nearly\u00a0$33,400\u00a0(\u00a3480) and included food, wages, maintenance, and cars,\u00a0in half.<\/p>\n “Nothing expensive is to be bought, by either of us, without talking it over,”\u00a0Churchill wrote to this wife Clementine, according<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0Lough.<\/p>\n “No more champagne is to be bought.\u00a0Unless special directions are given only white or red wine, or whisky and soda will be offered at luncheon, or dinner. The Wine Book to be shown to me every week. No more port is to be opened without special instructions.”<\/p>\n “Cigars must be reduced to four a day. None should be put on the table; but only produced out of my case.”<\/p>\n In addition to the proposed savings, the Churchills would “very rarely, if at all,” invite guests over to the estate and would discontinue serving\u00a0fish\u00a0during dinner.<\/p>\n Within a year,\u00a0Churchill’s cost-saving plan unraveled and his family shipped off\u00a0for a lengthy cruise around the Mediterranean.<\/p>\n