A malt revolution

There was a wonderful old girl called Alice Roosevelt Longworth. The daughter of the good Roosevelt president, Theodore, she was a formidable Washington political hostess until her nineties. The older she grew, the more fearless she became. By the end, she combined the plain speaking of her Dutch forebears with a wit and sharpness which would have delighted, and intimidated, any salon, anywhere, ever.

She also solved one of the greater minor mysteries of the 20th century. If any two human beings were fated to become staunch friends, it ought to have been Theodore Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. To win the second world war, Churchill had to get on with the lesser Roosevelt, FDR. By the end, the need to appease that Roosevelt’s feline vanities was an enormous strain on a man who was never at ease as a suitor. With the proper Roosevelt, everything should have been much simpler. Physical fearlessness, a grand sweep of intellect, a grandiose vision, grandiloquence: the two had so much in common.