They don't make 'em like they used to . . .

On [Winston Churchill's] eighty-fifth birthday a back-bencher in the House, assuming that Churchill was out of earshot, told the MP beside him: "They say the old man's getting gaga." Without turning, Winston said: "Yes, and they say he's getting deaf, too."

. . . At a dinner party, [Lady Astor] told him: "Winston, if I were your wife, I'd poison your soup." He replied, "Nancy, if I were your husband, I'd drink it." . . . [Churchill] drove a sharp needle into Labour policy one day when he met [Labour leader Clement Attlee] in the House's men's room. 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. Attlee said, "Feeling standoffish today, are we, Winston?" Churchill said: "That's right. Every time you see something big, you want to nationalize it."

-- from The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill, Visions of Glory, 1874-1932, by William Manchester