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More than just funny food and a stern face
MAT COWARD remembers the curious character of Sir Stafford Cripps, who was Winston Churchill's ambassador to the Soviet Union, with a famously eccentric diet
POST-WAR AUSTERITY: Sir Stafford Cripps, as Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer, leaves 11 Downing Street for the House of Commons to present his budget on April 6 1949

THE apparent link between digestive troubles and radicalism is often noted, though rarely pursued with any kind of scientific rigour.

Are people with bothersome guts disproportionately drawn to the revolutionary cause? Or do leftwingers develop such symptoms from worrying about the state of the world? Or is the whole thing a statistical illusion — the result, if you’ll pardon the expression, of relying on too small a sample size?

Whatever the case, “Sir Stifford Crapps” was an inevitable nickname for a man as famous for his asceticism and his stomach problems as for his political actions.

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