Winston Churchill's Silk Pyjamas

Today we're time traveling, dear reader. Given that we've been traveling already, I hope this isn't too much of a shock, but if you need to rest for a few minutes or put on a pot of tea to calm your nerves, I completely understand. I'll just be here waiting for you to stop being such a pussy little bitch.

We're not time traveling to the 1940s, however, as I suspect you may have guessed given the title of this post.

We needn't go nearly that far. No, just set your DeLorean for early 2010 and we'll be off.

I was a freshman at Colgate, and I'd signed up for a course called War and the Holocaust in Europe. Most of the history classes I'd taken in high school were U.S. history and ambitiously claimed that we'd make it close to present day after beginning with colonial underpinnings. The farthest we ever seemed to get was the Civil War. Maybe Reconstruction, if we were lucky. So I signed up for different history.

Snatches of information from the class have remained with me, though the dates I was forced to memorize have not. I have kept one fact in my memory quite clearly. It was probably the most trivial fact that I could have stored away from all the information presented to me in lectures and readings, but I delight in quirky information.

Winston Churchill liked to wear silk pajamas.

His love of cigars is well documented and his habit of eating well has been recorded widely by historians and witnessed in his girth. But silk pajamas? It's the kind of fact I would make up. I have been known to spread rumors about friends of mine dating former press secretaries, dining with literary giants, and being involved in the assassinations of heads of state. But this is a fact that was printed in a nonfiction book that I had to read for War and the Holocaust in Europe.

John Lukacs, a historian with a professed fondness for Winston Churchill, taught me of Churchill's love of silk pajamas. Apparently Churchill was wearing silk pajamas on the morning of May 10th as Hitler began his invasions of Holland and Belgium.

I was incredulous when I first read about Churchill's pajama habits. Not because I didn't believe Winston would wear silk pajamas. I had never really thought about his bedtime attire before. I don't often think about what world leaders wear to bed. Perhaps I ought to. But I digress. I was incredulous because I was not sure how Lukacs had happened upon the information of what Churchill was wearing on the morning of May 10th, 1940 when he sat down to breakfast. Somehow that seemed like the kind of thing that wouldn't be recorded as war broke out in earnest across Europe.

But I have seen Winston's silk pajamas.

Perhaps it is now fitting for us to come out of time travel mode. This week, my history class visited the Churchill War Rooms and the attached Churchill Museum. Wandering among the artifacts of Churchill's life I stumbled upon his nap time togs. I was delighted and disappointed by my find.

I was standing in front of the pajamas that I had long regarded as a historical myth comparable to Columbus being the first to spin the idea of the world being round - if slightly less widespread. I had found the abominable snowman. But I still felt cheated. Winston's silk pajamas were, as you can see, white, plain, and conservative. In all the time I had imagined Churchill in his pajamas, which is probably more often than I should admit, I had not pictured his silk pajamas looking so boring. I wanted them to be red, shiny, and a little bit sexy.

But as the placard explained, the folded white shirt in front of me had been Churchill's nightshirt. I take some solace in the fact that even if Winston did not dress nightly in shiny, red silk, he at least could feel the breeze flowing in through the bottom of his nightshirt.