Churchill's Black Dog and other essays -by Anthony Storr

Churchill had a depression that was entirely explicable. He was not loved, as a child, by his parents, and although he idealised them he knew that they did not return his love. Sent to boarding school as a small boy, his letters to his mother clearly express his hopeless longing for her interest. His anger with her (or them) turned to other targets, eventually it turned inwards and became depression.

The adult Churchill found ways of coping with his depression. One of them was to set himself challenges, like building a wall, and another was to focus on creative output - writing and painting. His painting is remarkable for the bright, sunlit colours he used - and it seems he consciously used these to cheer himself up. This is one example of his practical approach to his Black Dog.

Storr was a psychoanalyst, who admired Churchill for his courage in the face of this crippling woe, and also, he came from the same kind of background - the prep school, public school elite which has to cope with emotional damage without complaint because of its commensurate privileges. An admiring, empathetic analysis is the first essay in this fascinating book that looks into the possible sources of creativity and genius.

In old age Churchill no longer had the energy - physical or creative - to keep depression at bay, and he spent days sitting in front of the fire without speaking, sunk in a depression that lasted for perhaps five years or longer. Nobody would wish this on anyone and it was a particularly sad end of life for someone whose testing hour had not found him wanting in courage.

Storr also writes about Kafka, who suffered from having a very poor self-image which prevented him from forming close and happy relationships. His sense of identity was weak, and he felt threatened by the company of other people. But his writing transformed his painful personal experiences into something that still intrigues readers. He felt that he was "to be punished throughout his life for some unspecified crime". His life pre-dates the Holocaust, but he was a Jew in Prague, and soon that was to be crime enough.

Another essay deals with the strange temperament of Isaac Newton, although I am not convinced that Newton was depressed. Initially, he was well-nurtured by his mother, but when she re-married she sent him away to his grandparents. He may have felt rejected, but on the other hand he may have become an anti-social eccentric whatever had happened to him!