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The Legends Speak
We take the words right out of their mouths as Cigar Aficionado imagines what it would be like to have a face-to-face with history’s most famous cigar smokers.
P.J. O'Rourke
From the Print Edition:
Cigar Aficionado's 20th Anniversary, September/October 2012
(continued from page 2)
CA: You wouldn’t be averse to a Paul Garmirian Corona Grande?
CHURCHILL: Of this I am quite sure, that if we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future.
CA: Are you a strict traditionalist, or do you accept innovation in the cigar-making art?
CHURCHILL: Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.
CA: A good smoke is a good smoke?
CHURCHILL: No amount of rhetoric or voluminous discussion can possibly diminish the overwhelming importance of the point.
CA: But what about machine-made cigars?
CHURCHILL: Decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute.
CA: No exceptions?
CHURCHILL: The latest refinements of science are linked with the cruelties of the Stone Age.
CA: How do you feel about the antismoking campaign in modern Britain?
CHURCHILL: I have watched this famous island descending incontinently, fecklessly, the stairway which leads to a dark gulf.
CA: The so-called “Nanny State” seems intent on involving itself in every detail of our personal lives.
CHURCHILL: And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.
CA: What advice would you offer to the confirmed cigar-smoker in the face of the relentless war against tobacco?
CHURCHILL: Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in.
Rudyard Kipling
CIGAR AFICIONADO: May I offer you a cigar?
RUDYARD KIPLING: Open the old cigar box, get me a Cuba stout, for things are running crossways, and Maggie and I are out.
CA: I was under the impression that your wife’s name is Caroline.
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