A gallant defence of Churchill's health habits The real controversy about Churchill's health, of course, concerns the Second World War and also his peacetime premiership. He was 65 years old when he first became prime minister, and although he revelled in the work, the strains were colossal. He suffered a tooth abscess in 1941, a heart attack while staying at the White House just after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor at the end of that year, and pneumonia in England in 1943, followed by "full-blown" pneumonia in Carthage. He had a severe stroke when prime minister in peacetime, in June 1953, and was off work until October. He never fully recovered his powers, though he continued in office until 1955. There is not the faintest chance that he would have been allowed to stay on, so ill, if he had lived in the 21st century, but so different were the attitudes of that time, that his stroke was successfully concealed from the public. In discussing all this, Beasley brings an expert but clear approach. He has a nice way with him of explaining medical science with vivid analogies, such as the brain as a boxing glove. He is interesting on what was available to doctors at the time. Remember, for instance, how much more dangerous was pneumonia in the days before penicillin. And he gives a good account of the reality of treating a great man on whose health a nation's fate depends. What is medically most advisable (eg doing nothing) may not be what is politically possible. What really excites Beasley, however, is a tremendous animus against Charles Wilson, Lord Moran, who was Churchill's personal physician from 1940. In the year after Churchill's death, Moran published Churchill: The Struggle for Survival. Controversy about it has raged ever since. The book described itself as "taken from the diaries of Lord Moran," which gave a clue that it was composed, at least in part, with the benefit of hindsight. Whatever it exactly was, the book clearly breached patient confidentiality. Beasley takes the Churchill family's part, not only about Moran's breach of trust, but about his account of Churchill's condition. He gets very angry with Moran's idea that Churchill suffered from full depression: Moran misinterpreted Winston's phrase "black dog" as being something special and personal, whereas it was the general term Victorian nannies - and, indeed, Dr Johnson - used to describe feeling low. As for Moran's claims about Churchill's heavy drinking, Beasley minimises them. He merely had old-fashioned aristocratic habits, he says. Loyally, Beasley wishes to defend Churchill against most suggestions of decline. He publishes pictures of his signatures in 1962 and 1963 to show that the later one is better. One sympathises with his affection for Churchill. But the inescapable fact is that, however improper, Moran's book is utterly fascinating. One could criticise him for publishing it when he did, but one must be glad that it exists. This gallant, short book does not succeed in dethroning the fuller work of the hated Moran. But it stands on its own merits as a vivid account of Churchill's battle between his body and his spirit.