My book is about Kipling‘s notion that success and failure, or triumph and disaster, can be impostors. That does not mean, of course, that all triumphs and all disasters are always impostors. But to say that wittily, we really need ole Winston.

Churchill, as it happens, lived a life that in many ways illustrates Kipling’s impostors, but that’s for another post. Here is today’s anecdote:

After the Brits voted him out of office in the 1945 election (as a Thank You for winning the war–talk about impostor!), his wife said to him that this defeat might be a “blessing in disguise.”

“At the moment,” Churchill replied, “it seems quite effectivley disguised.”