DID WINSTON CHURCHILL HAVE A BIPOLAR DISORDER?

Mental health may well have been behind the success of many modern leaders. It is the professional assessment of Professor Gordon Parker, that Winston Churchill was one such leader and has written a play dramatizing behaviour in Churchill’s wartime life that suggests his mental condition showed he had a bipolar disorder. Currently a Scientia Professor of Psychiatry at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Gordon Parker has worked for over 50 years as a clinician and researcher. He was the founder and, for years, executive director of the Black Dog Institute, Head of the School of Psychiatry at UNSW. On Tuesday 12 March 2024, Gordon Parker addressed The Sydney Institute to discuss his diagnosis of Churchill and give some of the anecdotal evidence for it.

DID WINSTON CHURCHILL HAVE A BIPOLAR DISORDER?

GORDON PARKER

In considering whether Winston Churchill had a bipolar disorder, I need to emphasise that any such judgment should not diminish him.  In fact, the opposite, as – along with so many with a bipolar disorder – his achievements in depth and breadth were extraordinary and Churchill has long been one of my heroes.  Where we would be now if he had not led the Allies to an unpredicted victory in World War II?   Another mark of my respect was our naming of a new clinical research facility the Black Dog Institute.

While Churchill popularised the “black dog” metaphor, he borrowed it from Johnson and Boswell, who both suffered from depression.  But it had much earlier origins, stretching back into ancient Celtic times when depression was equally likely to be described as a “black fog” as a “black dog”, while today many sufferers describe it as a “black hole”.

In seeking to put the argument that he had a bipolar condition I had several options. One a book – but then join the end of a queue of more than 700 biographies already on Churchill.  Two, a scientific article.  Word limit problems.  I chose a third option to write a play…fallback film…fallback TV series.  More, shortly.

But let me first define the bipolar disorders.  Once we allowed only one – called manic depressive illness, a psychotic condition now called Bipolar I or BP I.  Bipolar II – a non-psychotic variant – has, like BP I, existed forever but was only given diagnostic status in the mid-1990s, and previously positioned more as a personality style (commonly called cyclothymia).  Both have strong genetic origins.

Both conditions comprise phases of mood lows and highs.  During depressive episodes, defining symptoms are a profoundly despairing mood – with suicidal thoughts common (with actual suicide occurring slightly more commonly in the bipolar II variant), an inability to experience pleasure or to be cheered up, a lack of energy causing the individual to find it hard to get out of bed and get going, foggy concentration, mood and energy being worse in the morning, and with appetite and sleep disturbances common.  During such states sufferers lose the light in their eyes.

During both non-psychotic “hypomanic” states (that mark BP II) and psychotic manic states (that mark BP I) most individuals are extremely “happy” but a small percentage can be very snappy. For example, Spike Milligan, one of nature’s gentlest human beings, would take an axe to his neighbours’ property when he went psychotically manic. (All captured in a play titled “Ying Tong” and performed down the road at the STC in 2007.)  Or Lord Byron – whose behaviours during manic highs invoked the “mad, bad and dangerous” descriptor. During such “highs”, individuals talk more, generally talk over others, spend more money (often with disastrous consequences), need less sleep without feeling tired, have their worries disappear like snow on a summer’s day, have increased libido, feel more creative, often feel bulletproof and generally take more risks.  Their eyes are then bright and sparkling.  Some with blue eyes have them turn to black. They can drink more alcohol – some seemingly turning wine into water – with one of my patients becoming drunk on two glasses of wine when in a normal mood yet able to consume two bottles of wine and half a bottle of vodka when high and still be coherent.  They not uncommonly experience suprasensory phenomena (eg hearing traffic outside the building that no one else can hear, smells and tastes being strikingly rich, an ability to listen to an orchestra and deconstruct and attend to each instrument and then reconstruct the orchestra again).  And a key phenomenon that can occur – and relevant to our topic – distinctive prescience or judging that they are aware of events before they actually occur and sometimes able to shape them.

The official classificatory manuals state that manic and hypomanic states are impairing.  Quite the opposite in reality. In a study we recently published, some 60 per cent of individuals with a bipolar disorder reported improved performance during their highs.  One HSC student patient of mine was given five essays to complete in the next six weeks.  She completed them in three days after no sleep at all and received top marks for each essay.  Joshua Logan took eighteen months to produce South Pacific to critical acclaim – in a normal mood state throughout.  A few years later he produced Charlie’s Aunt in three days when high – again to critical acclaim – but then thought he might be able to fly out of his hotel window.

And, thus, the hypo/manic mood states with the increased energy, creativity, suprasensory phenomena and prescience help to explain why successful writers, poets, composers, artists, comedians and those in other creative fields are three to six times more likely to have a bipolar disorder. And also explain why so many brilliant business entrepreneurs and politicians have a bipolar disorder. In relation to politicians, psychiatrist Jonathan Davidson suggested that, of the first 51 British Prime ministers (including Churchill), 16 per cent had a bipolar disorder – with none of them losing office and most being judged as superior performers to the effective control group of mentally healthy PMs.  Nor would any have received a bipolar II diagnosis at the time as, and as noted earlier, formal recognition of the condition only emerged in the mid-nineties.

So, turning to Churchill, what is the evidence and, more importantly, what can we learn from the linkage. In particular, from his actions as a warrior.

Firstly, I mentioned that there is a strong genetic contribution to the bipolar disorders, with family members distinctly more likely to have a bipolar or depressive disorder. Five of Churchill’s Duke of Marlborough ancestors had manic depressive conditions while one of his children, Diana (who worked for the Samaritan anti-suicide organisation in London) committed suicide at the age of 54.

For the play/film/Netflix exercise I chose to focus on two World War I chapters – the Dardanelles Gallipoli campaign, especially in light of the Australian connection, and Antwerp. I provided five characters. Winston, his wife Clementine, his private secretary Edward Marsh who viewed Churchill as England’s greatest leader since King Alfred, Jackie Fisher – the First Sea Lord during the campaign (grandiose and complementing Winston with the two operating as “port and starboard” lights before their fall out), and Violet Asquith, daughter of Prime Minister Asquith, who later (as Violet Bonham Carter) published one of the warmest biographies of Churchill in 1965.  Violet fell in love with Winston when they first met – she 19 and he 32 – and believed that he would marry her.  When he failed to turn up for the planned Asquith family weekend and propose marriage she was devastated and made a suicide attempt.  Winston had become distracted and, as ever opening up a second front, had headed instead to spend time with Clementine.  For years, Violet (Winston’s conduit to the Prime Minister) and Clementine sought to tear each other’s eyes out – but….they were English.

And thus, I called the play “Churchill’s Gallipoli” and it did the circuit – having a chance when an Australian film company sent it to their London office with a recommendation but there turned down as there apparently have been “too many films on Churchill”.   After a reading of the play by one theatre company a couple of years back I judged it as far too didactic and in need of colour. And so, I added a sixth character, Boris Johnson – at the time he was Lord Mayor – and for a number of reasons.  Firstly, his 2014 biography is one of the best biographies of Churchill and a manageable text of only some 400 pages. Most reviewers of his book identified his clear self-percept as being “the next Churchill”, providing a comparator.  Boris goes through the play (now titled ‘Winston and Boris’) disclaiming any such view while constantly referencing multiple positive reviews of his book.  An example (and an actual quote): “My chances as a future PM – about as good as the chances of finding Elvis on Mars or of me being decapitated by a frisbee.”  Further dissembling he emphasises that he was essentially just a journalist, which he defines as a job “where you are given a huge dumper truck of verbal gravel and then have to know how to pick out the pebbles to create the mosaic.”  Secondly, he acts like a Shakespearian fool – intellectual variant class – and I have reworked many of his actual rollicking one liners to achieve some relevance. Thirdly, there is faint interconnection in that his paternal great grandfather (an anglophile Turkish polemicist) was waiting in Constantinople at the time of the Dardanelles campaign. Fourthly, there is the shared issue of prescience – detailed shortly.

Let me provide you with an extract from Scene 1. It is September 1914 and Winston is in his bathroom. He is dressed in silk pyjamas, towel over one shoulder and phone in hand, next to a full bath. During the scene he knocks boats out of the bath in anger. He roars into the phone:

Admiral Cradock, you must protect the French transport ships from von Spee’s attacks.  No, you are not to await orders from Battenberg.  He is still working out a strategy. I am not usurping my authority – I’m ensuring a job gets done.  I’m the First Lord of the Admiralty, and you do what I say. Cradock, your vessels are not obsolescent and stop telling me your men are inexperienced.  I am ordering you to meet von Spee and the Germans in company.  You will not wait for the reinforcements. You will proceed now. Ignore my previous telegrams.  This is a new direction on directions for engagement.   And stop interrupting me when I’m interrupting you.

[Winston calls out to the side]. Get the Prime Minister on the phone. I don’t care if he is going to see the King.  This is more important!  It doesn’t matter what they say, it’s what I say. I’m the one in charge.  We will go forward and forward without fear. The price of greatness is responsibility.

Boris enters the stage riding a push bike. He lets it drop and tosses his helmet onto a table, knocking over glasses and plates.

The 1914 battle of Coronel off Chile! England’s worst naval disaster in a hundred years. Winston had the fleet going one way and then the other – creating total confusion – and overriding his lines of authority. The outcome, tragic. Sixteen hundred British officers and men dead (including Admiral Cradock), and two German ships getting through to Constantinople. Appeared certain to bring Turkey into the war on Germany’s side. Led to him bringing back Lord Fisher as he thought the Admiralty was ossified.

But what energy did Churchill have? He would whir into the night as though his battery was made of some superior mixture of chemicals unknown to man. What sort of fuel did he run on? Was his superior internal combustion genetically endowed or a consequence of childhood conditioning?”

The point I make here is that Churchill was a politician and his role as First Lord of the Admiralty was essentially to ensure that the fleet was equipped. Here he usurped the appointed leader of the navy, First Sea Lord Cradock, leading to calamitous losses to the British Navy and the future risk of Turkey joining with Germany.  Not in and of itself proof of a hypomanic high but quite compatible and supported by his bathroom tirade evidencing grandiosity and entitlement – mood markers of a “high”.

Let me note some observations made by others about Churchill during World War I.

Lloyd George described how he and his wife were sitting in dead silence as Big Ben struck 11 pm and war was announced. Churchill had raced into their room radiant, and with words pouring out after each other as to how he was going to send telegrams to the Mediterranean, the North Sea and God knows where. Lloyd George stated that he couldn’t determine what was the more disquieting of the two events – war being declared or WC being quite mad. A few years previously, Lloyd George likened WC to a chauffeur who is apparently perfectly sane and drives with great skill for months and then suddenly takes people over a precipice.

At an Admiralty dinner at the beginning of World War I, Churchill was described as radiating a vainglorious and grandiose mood – “This, my God, is living history.  Everything we are doing and saying is thrilling – it will be read by a thousand generations.  I would not be out of this glorious, delicious war for anything the world could give me”.

Mood swings were evident in his escape during the Boer war when he would run through the forests feeling intense exhilaration. Lord Beaverbrook captured the pattern as well as any other observer in describing Churchill as either “at the top of the wheel of confidence or at the bottom of an intense depression”.

Let me now focus on the World War I Dardanelles campaign.

Churchill sought to open up a second front via the Dardanelles and the Gallipoli peninsular and seize Constantinople, a strategy to be implemented via the navy BUT without any troops and which Admiral Fisher judged a lunatic idea. Once again, as First Lord of the Admiralty, Churchill’s only job was to ensure that the fleet was equipped, not to undertake or intrude on operational matters.

Churchill overrode everyone, leading to Fisher resigning. He talked about the campaign on radio, made a forewarning attack on the Turkish forts – giving them enough time to reinforce their guns and troops and also to lay mines. In March 1915 he ordered the navy to proceed without troops. He ignored the technical issues about shelling put to him by experts, so that shelling the forts failed. The navy prioritised removal of the mines and sent Churchill five requests for specialist minesweepers. He didn’t wait, calling on inadequate trawlers manned by amateur fishermen, most being swept away by the currents or killed by the Turks. A fleet of 16 battleships, 12 cruisers and 22 destroyers sailed into the Straits. Less than seven hours later, one-third of the fleet was lost, 700 sailors killed and with Admiral de Robeck recalling the fleet. And with such disastrous decision making continuing through to Gallipoli.

But let me turn to a more persuasive exemplar of Churchill’s hypomanic behaviour. In the previous year, Churchill sought to address the stalemate on the Western front. He asked Foreign Minister Grey if he could go to Antwerp, and decided against taking professional troops, instead called on his own Royal Naval Volunteer Reserves – vulnerable amateurs including Rupert Brooke and most having never fired a gun in their life. The Marine Brigade were to provide a distraction by marching backwards and forwards, north to south, east to west across Antwerp. Supported by London Piccadilly buses commandeered by Churchill to confuse the Germans. Churchill acted like a traffic controller offering endless commands in a crazy mixture of English and French. Many of the Reserves died and more than 1000 were taken prisoner, with Antwerp shortly falling to the Germans.

So, enjoying himself, after only 36 hours Churchill telegraphed Prime Minister Asquith requesting permission to resign from the Admiralty and continue in command of all British forces in Antwerp and to have the rank of Major General, after referring to Britain’s most distinguished military leaders as mediocrities and “dug out trash”.  In response, the British press described him as a posturing military adventurer and emphasised that his place should be at the Admiralty, day and night. Asquith was struck by his impudence and disinhibition, reporting that he showed a “zigzag streak of lightening in the brain”, and called it a “wicked folly.” Lloyd George criticised him publicly for leaving untrained men in the lurch. Captain Richmond reported back from Antwerp, “I really believe Churchill is not sane” and that the Navy was in “lunatic hands” at that time. Bonar Law stated that Antwerp evidenced Churchill’s “entirely unbalanced mind”.  In his book, Boris Johnson stated that it was an enterprise so incompetent that it made the Charge of the Light Brigade appear positively slick.

What determined such calamitous outcomes in WWI and such brilliant and ever inspiring victories in WWII under Churchill’s leadership? I offer a personal view. His peers knew that there was a mental or personality problem in WWI but they did not know what it was or how to address it. In WWII, and again without any awareness by others that he had a bipolar II disorder (for no such diagnosis formally existed), minders were put in place to check every decision. For example, Montgomery would never act on a Churchill command until it had been passed through and approved by a minder. A stay well plan should be a management component in treating anyone with a bipolar disorder these days (eg identify the early signs and put previously agreed on strategies in place). One of my patients with a bipolar disorder – a highly respected professional – happened to mention to me during an early high that he had a gun at home. I told him that he should surrender it. The next week he turned up and gave it to my secretary!

I noted earlier that a key attribute that many with a bipolar have is a high degree of prescience. It is not limited, however, to those with that condition. Boris Johnson told his father when he was a child that he wanted to be the “world king” and later told Charles Spencer that he wanted to be President of the United States – technically possible as his father had given him both UK and US passports.

Churchill had a very high level of prescience and a similar story. At 16, he said to his only friend at Harrow that he would later command the defences of London, saying “I will save the capital and the Empire.” At 23, he wrote his only book of fiction – Savrola – in which the hero figure predicts a world conflagration then saves the capital from a tyrant only later to be dismissed from office. How is that for prescience?

But a sense of prescience does not guarantee the predicted result. When 18 and being chased by his brother and a cousin in a “fox and hare” game, Churchill thought he could escape by leaping off a bridge and sliding down an adjacent fir tree to land gently on the grass. He stated that he felt invincible and could see that result before he leapt. He leapt. He missed the tree. And, instead, he landed on hard ground, rupturing a kidney and nearly dying.

I’ve seen brilliant prescience-based achievements in a number of those with a bipolar disorder. I also observe the dangers of prescience in many such patients – the man who put thousands of dollars on red 23 at roulette being absolutely convinced that it would land, or the share trader who precipitously traded a fortune at 3 am having had a clairvoyant burst. Prescience operated in much of Churchill’s life – even, for example, when he played bridge – intuitively often doubling and redoubling against the odds.

Distinguished psychiatric academic Kay Jamison – one of the two authors of the seminal academic book titled Manic-Depressive Illness and who described her own bipolar I illness in An Unquiet Mind wrote in another of her books (Touched with Fire, p 2) that the manic depressive temperament is marked by “fierce energy, high mood, and quick intelligence; a sense of the visionary and the grand; a restless and feverish temperament” and with such people often appearing to the world as “mercurial, intemperate, volatile, troubled, or stormy”. Do those descriptors not capture Churchill?

Winston was a hero, a true warrior, a man who came alive when under enemy fire (his antidepressant – before having a more formal one prescribed in later life), a wonderful communicator and one of our greatest leaders. In my view, he had a bipolar II disorder and that, during mood elevating highs, he made decisions based more commonly on prescience rather than on logic and then, disinhibited, adopted a “break or breakthrough” philosophy – both a reflection of his personality and of his bipolar highs. In WWI he free ranged, in WWII there were safeguards in place. A simple explanation but I hope a valid interpretation.

And would not such a dissection make for an intriguing play….or film….or…Netflix series.  (sigh).