Winston Churchill in a bathing suit

It's not clear to me whether this photo of Winston Churchill in a bathing suit comes from 1911 or 1922 -- the title of the How to Be a Retronaut page is ambiguous -- but either way, he cut a fine figure of a man.

Winston Churchill in his swimsuit, 1911/1922

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: History • photos • sports • uk

More at Boing Boing

Ants and Stars: Bruce Sterling and Jasmina Tesanovic visit the Sardinia Radio Telescope in Italy

The Snowden Principle

http://lubke.net Flashman

We will flaunt them, on the beaches
- semiotix
  
  Take a straightedge and connect the corners of that photograph. Notice where the two lines meet, almost to the pixel.
  
  I don’t know whether it was the original photographer, or the guy who developed the film, or whoever cropped this for BB, but somebody wanted us thinking about Little Winnie all day long. Well, mission accomplished!
  - awjt
    
    We have nothing to fear but… BALLSACK!
  - http://mattdm.org/ Matthew Miller
    
    An argument for (or against?) Westhoff’s diagonal method.
- Efemmeral
  
  Only if he’s a grower.
- SomeGuyNamedMark
  
  That water must’ve been cold.
http://profile.yahoo.com/U7SDZYQSNFCVFCAQPF5PH7WMIQ Jeffrey

Looking at the source, the simplest explanation is that these are photos from 1911 AND 1922. This one here is from 1922.
https://twitter.com/PhoetrySlam Cyran0

Bollocks
Robert Holmen

I’d have thought the water at a British beach would be impossibly cool year-round but some maps suggest that summer temps in the 80′s (F) are entirely common.
- RadioSilence
  
  Not this summer. It hasn’t stopped raining since march.
- http://www.jjsaul.com Jim Saul
  
  I dunno… looks like it was probably pretty cold.
- http://lubke.net Flashman
  
  I’ve lived on the south coast in Sussex and in south Wales and in the summer the sea there is very pleasant and swimmable.
  - http://noadi.etsy.com/ Sheryl Westleigh
    
    That would be the Gulf Stream.
- KittyDelAmour
  
  Just because the air temp is in the 80s doesn’t mean the water temp is the same…and if you’re at a beach in the north, say, Scarborough or Whitby, you’re swimming in the North Sea – ALWAYS cold.
franko

i love that it’s a tabloid called The Tatler. some things never change.
Just_Ok

Pretty sure that’s from D-Day.
- SomeGuyNamedMark
  
  The German soldiers surrendered en masse when they saw that coming.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    ♫ Land of soap and water,
    Hitler’s having a bath.
    Churchill’s looking through the keyhole,
    Having a jolly good laugh ♫
    …because…
    ♫ Hitler has only one big ball
    Göring has two but very small,
    Himmler has something sim’lar,
    But poor old Goebbels has no balls at all. ♫
  - Just_Ok
    
    What did they do when he was getting ready to come?
RadioSilence

“It’s not clear to me whether this photo of Winston Churchill in a bathing suit comes from 1911 or 1922″

Wikipedia telles me he was born in 1874. So does he look 37 or 48?
It could still be either; people looked older in those days.
- rattypilgrim
  
  Definitely 1922. Swimmers wore more elaborate bathing suits in 1912. There’s a figure in the water off his left shoulder that looks like a woman. Is that a swimming cap or white hair? The cut of the jib on the neckline looks a little different, too, though in those days the suits were pretty much uni-sex knitted wool which was actually pretty revealing when soaked with water. That said, I do prefer the cover up of a big belly those suits provided. Just my personal pref.
http://www.millsworks.net/blog Robbo

Is that a cigar in your trunks or are you just happy to see me?
- chaopoiesis
  
  The nanosecond I saw this post, I thought “some BBB’s gonna pull a cigar joke”.
  
  Et voila.
  - Just_Ok
    
    Very funny. Now pull the other one.
Antinous / Moderator

He always looks like he’s about ready to bite someone.
- howaboutthisdangit
  
  “We shall bite on the beaches….”
Guest

Hopefully a grower, certainly not a shower.
http://twitter.com/petitepoubelle petite poubelle

Just look at it.
- ocker3
  
  I think we’ve all already done that…
http://twitter.com/Bog_woppit Christine Turner

Sexy!!
- http://twitter.com/punkrockbeth punkrockbeth
  
  I agreee. Looking good, Churchie!
Tim Newsome

Fine figure of a man? He’s overweight and has no muscle definition. I respect Winston Churchill, but not for his physical appearance.
- http://www.facebook.com/marko.raos Marko Raos
  
  … /facepalm
  - joeposts
    
    All he’s saying is that Winston Churchill should have been rockin’ the Bowflex® before hitting the surf to tighten his abs and tone that flabby jaw. But I think we can all be jealous of those legs.
- franko
  
  actually, he’s a lot trimmer than he’s usually depicted in movies and tv shows with his character in it.
- Robert Holmen
  
  “He’s overweight and has no muscle definition.”
  
  The average American male should be so overweight and undefined.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    Uh, the same goes for the UK.
- SomeGuyNamedMark
  
  That is what happens when you stay cooped up in those WWII bomb shelters
Wingnut

Cor blimey! Winnie was a Page 3 girl.
http://www.facebook.com/marko.raos Marko Raos

Don’t touch my junk.
http://twitter.com/recurrie Robert Currie

Normandy, 1944.
malindrome

Never have so many ogled so much at so little.
randyman

For what it’s worth, I honestly believe that one of the great tragedies of our time is that William Manchester died before he was able to complete the last volume of his Churchill bio, “The Last Lion.”

The first two volumes are spectacular, and he was just getting to the good stuff. My knowledge of history is abysmal, and these books were so enlightening… seek out the first two volumes, and I promise you’ll never regret it.

You. I’m talking to you. You will be very glad you sought out these books. Enlighten yourself.
- Warren_Terra
  
  It’s not even that he died too soon … it’s that his mind went, long before he died. Because a lot of people had been waiting a long time for the planned third volume, there was a lot of interest, and the New York Times ran a front-page (iirc) story about how Manchester had given up, because he could no longer concentrate enough to read and to write. I remember in particular a section about how Manchester had once eschewed television drama as being too simple-minded, and now couldn’t even watch cop shows because he couldn’t follow the plot and keep a grip on the narrative for the hour the show ran. Very sad.
  
  His other books are very worth reading, especially his war memoir and his books on the Kennedy assassination, on Krupp, and on America 1932-1972. I recall finding his Mencken biography a little pedestrian.
- J_H_M
  
  Regarding the two volume hagiography of Churchill, the
  “Last Lion”, I take it that you like your history served up as semi-fiction.
  - Wreckrob8
    
    What has salt to do with it? A halography is a treatise on salt (which might explain what Old Winston was doing in the sea). I think you mean hagiography.
    - J_H_M
      
      Thanks for the correction. Hagiography is a useful word when it applies, and I should learn how to spell it.
      
      Since the word refers to a biography written with the excesses of a nomination for sainthood, I guessed, incorrectly, that it had something to do with halos.
Scratcheee

Maybe this type of suit could be a good alternative to the naked scanner at the airport.
Mister44

Fun fact – these suits were knitted wool. I can’t imagine them being that comfy.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  My mother had a navy blue one piece with white piping and buttons to close it. I swear that it was made out of sailcloth. It could stand up on its own.
  - Mister44
    
    Does she still have it? Vintage suits are worth money.
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      Long gone.
SomeGuyNamedMark

He’s a little cranky. He hasn’t had his day’s champagne yet.
s2redux

And so now the mystery of who’s behind funnyjunk.com is solved.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_GVKHNINUD55NXFN4TRNHMBRDB4 Alexandros

Splendid.
I could have gone through my day without having a gaze at Winston Churchills barely hidden junk.
Thanks, BoingBoing …
mclean1382

I vote for 1922: he had more hair in 1911.
marilynsue

There’s a small statue built exactly the same at the Herb Ritts exhibit at the Getty Center in LA. After Ritts, Klimt, and the Impressionists, I’ve had enought T, A, P, D and Scrote to last several months!
http://www.gyrofrog.com/ Gyrofrog

That’s unfortunate
GregS

What has been seen cannot be unseen. Thanks, BoingBoing, for forever implanting this image in my head.
http://www.papermages.com/ tompl

He intended to fight them on the beaches… in that?
J_H_M

Regarding the picture of Churchill at the beach circa 1911 or 1922: Put your thumb, or some other object over Winnie,’s (Churchill’s) face and receding hairline and see if you can tell whether you are looking at a super annuated, boy person, or super annuated girl person.
http://www.facebook.com/teleny Alissa Mower Clough

Well, if he looked like that coming out of cold water…Clemmie was a lucky lady!
avocadotoe

A slightly less flattering seaside picture quite damaged the reputations of Weimar Republic’s president Ebert and war secretary Noske in 1919.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  The problem isn’t so much what they look like half-naked; it’s how often they managed to get their kit off when there’s a photographer nearby.
http://profiles.google.com/obscurereferencewoman Harriet Engle

Proof positive that Sir Winston had “big brass ‘un’s” !