Refusal to pay the bills of one's tailor was famously almost a point of honour among English gentlemen in past centuries, and Winston Churchill was no exception, newly released archives show. Britain's World War2 leader had racked up a bill of £197 by 1937 - about R260000 at today's prices - with London Savile Row tailor Henry Poole & Co before he was finally asked to pay up."Churchill said it was for morale, it was good for us to dress him, but he never did pay, and never came back - he never forgave us," said James Sherwood, a historian who examined the tailor's archives.Churchill, who led the British government during the war and again in the 1950s, was in exalted company when it came to not settling tailors' bills.The son of author Charles Dickens, for example, ran up a bill with Poole that eventually had to be paid by his father.And when he was Prince of Wales in the 1870s, King Edward VII, made "infrequent payments on account that accumulated over years".When a bill was eventually sent to the prince, he withdrew his custom and only came back 20 years later when he became king.Other famous - and better behaved - customers of the tailor included author Bram Stoker, Bismarck, JP Morgan and Haile Selassie...