The Best in Bathroom Humor

If I would have broken with convention in my book post and chose six, instead of five books, I would have included William Manchester’s two volume biography of Winston Churchill, The Last Lion and Alone (obviously, since they are two volumes of the same series, they count as one book). Their only flaw is that they only take us up to the start of World War II (Manchester died before he could write the third volume) but Churchill’s pre-war years provided ample material for two volumes.

Manchester wonderfully captures Churchill’s genius, quirkiness, and of course his brilliant wit. One of my favorite anecdotes comes from the first volume. Manchester relates an incident shortly after the socialist Clement Atlee had defeated him for the Prime Ministership in the wake of World War II:

The scene: The men’s room of the House of Commons
Atlee, arriving first, had stepped up to the urinal trough when Churchill strode in on the same mission, glanced at him, and stood at the trough as far away from him as possible. Atlee said “Feeling standoffish today, are we, Winston?” Churchill said: “That’s right. Every time you see something big, you want to nationalize it.”