Sir Winston Churchill often felt the brunt of her wrath, too. The Prime Minister was a regular at Cliveden (Astor also entertained Gandhi, the Asquiths, HG Wells, JM Barrie and Rudyard Kipling), but the two were known rivals, as evidenced by one infamous exchange when Lady Astor remarked ‘If I were your wife, I would poison your coffee,’ and Churchill retorted ‘If I were your husband, I would drink it.’ In another apocryphal anecdote, Nancy responded to Churchill’s question regarding how best to disguise himself during an upcoming masquerade ball with ‘Why don’t you come sober, Prime Minister?’
The 1930s were a challenging time for Nancy Astor. Having only barely won reelection to the House of Commons, narrowly defeating the Labour Party candidate, she found herself embroiled in scandal when she suggested that the England cricket team had been defeated by Australia due to alcohol consumption. Both teams denied the claims, which had made the MP decidedly unpopular. No help at all was her son Bobby’s arrest for homosexuality in 1931. A child from her previous marriage to socialite Robert Gould Shaw II, Bobby would also often make comments in support of the Soviet Union, attracting the attention of Nancy’s Conservative Party peers. Lady Astor was a fierce opponent of Communism, but a lukewarm tour of Russia left her compatriots accusing her of going soft on Stalin.
