On May 8, 1945, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill announced the end of the Second World War. He concluded his radio address with “Nothing should prevent us from celebrating Victory Day in Europe today and tomorrow!” But before Churchill responded to his own call to celebrate the victory, he turned to his cook, Georgina Landemare, and said “Without you I would not have survived the war.” This was meant in deadly earnest, for eating well was essential to the stability and well-being of the statesman. It was Churchill’s belief that one should offer the body something good, so that the soul may desire to dwell in it. Landemare entered Churchill's kitchen in 1930. She soon learned that it would be anything but easy to meet the culinary demands of the master of the house. His answer to the question of what he liked was: “My taste is simple. I am easily satisfied with the best.” And her dishes stood up to his discerning palate. She knew his culinary preferences as well as his dislikes. Churchill appreciated traditional English dishes like chicken and roast beef. He preferred clear bouillons to cream soups, and if he had to choose between fish and shellfish, he chose the latter. Churchill preferred to finish his dinner with cheese. However, he was not enthusiastic about Cheddar, the most popular cheese in the English kingdom; rather, the blue cheese Stilton was his favorite. The gourmet insisted that cheese that came to his table should not be bought just anywhere, but only at a particular fromagerie. “A gentleman only buys his cheese at Paxton & Whitfield,” he said. The traditional company still exists and has been one of the suppliers of the British Royal Family for many years. Desserts such as puddings or tarts, on the other hand, were never high on Churchill’s culinary agenda. The prime minister often invited people to dinner parties at his home. He used dining as an art to display his conversational talents and to engage in political debate, to confer with friends and to win over rivals. During the WWII, he used dining to exert his conversational skills to persuade his allies, Franklin Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin, to fight the war. Churchill used dining and the dinner table to do what could not always be done at the conference table.