Plot Twist newsletter: Winston Churchill and the power of hobbies

Alexandra Suich Bass, our Culture editor, paints a picture of the most pleasurable pastimes

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Even Pablo Picasso was impressed. “If that man were a painter by profession, he would have no trouble earning a good living,” he reportedly observed. The celebrated Spanish artist was referring to Britain’s then prime minister, Winston Churchill. More than 50 of his 500 paintings are now on view at the Wallace Collection in London (until November 29th). “Winston Churchill: The Painter” is the biggest retrospective of his art since 1958, when Dwight Eisenhower, America’s president at the time, helped organise one. And it is immensely enjoyable and revelatory.

Wandering among the bright canvases, you have the feeling of getting to travel with Churchill. You go inside Blenheim Palace, his ancestral home, and visit Chartwell, his country house. You enjoy the view of Morocco he took in during the second world war (the only work he painted during the war, which he gave as a gift to Franklin Roosevelt). You join him on holiday in Normandy and the south of France. Time has made some of the images feel more poignant. One painting from 1938, of his family bathing on the coast in Kent next to a cannon facing mainland Europe, foreshadows the impending war.

Picasso is far from the only one to find Churchill a skilled, even soulful, artist. But his talent may not be your only takeaway from the show, which left me mulling the importance of hobbies. Churchill started painting in 1915, at the age of 40, to distract himself from his professional downfall after Britain’s failed campaign at Gallipoli. He experimented with his children’s paints one Sunday and then went on to get his own supplies and practice alongside a friend and mentor. You do not need an innate gift for it, he insisted, just sheer “audacity”: “We must not be too ambitious. We cannot aspire to masterpieces. We may content ourselves with a joy ride in a paint-box,” he wrote in “Painting as a Pastime”, an essay.

“To be really happy and really safe, one ought to have at least two or three hobbies, and they must all be real,” he argued. (Painting was not his sole love; Churchill also enjoyed bricklaying.) Hobbies distract and reinvigorate the mind. Research proves that they help boost your mood, lower stress and fight cognitive decline. A recent study from University College London showed that art and cultural visits are associated with better health outcomes and appear to help fight ageing. Those who took part in an artistic pursuit once a week, including visiting a museum or gallery, were about a year younger biologically than those who rarely did so. Churchill—and science—paint a happy picture.

Which hobby do you think is most diverting and pleasurable? What is the most unexpected benefit you’ve experienced? Write to us at plottwist@economist.com. Thanks to everyone who wrote to us about book bans and bravery. “What if we presume that celebrities (including successful authors) join political protests not to right a wrong, but merely as a self-marketing venture?” one reader wonders. “This would explain a great many low-danger, low-risk pontifications from celebrities.” Avinash Subramaniam argues Arundhati Roy, an outspoken Indian polemicist, should be included in any list of “brilliant and brave” writers.■