Cold Call: Ann Treneman rings Anthony Storr

DR ANTHONY Storr, the eminent psychiatrist and writer, knows a thing or three about depression. It's very common, it's doesn't mean you are unfit to run any country (much less Norway) and many people who have it are highly creative and valuable. "I gave a lecture at the Royal Society of Literature a few years ago that was titled `Writers and Recurrent Depression'. It was absolutely packed out and it wasn't because I was so well known or anything. They had been attracted by the title because half of them were suffering from recurrent depression!" He snorts with laughter. "So it really does click with a lot of people."

But, I say, it doesn't seem to click with a lot of politicians. I can't imagine that a similar lecture at the House of Commons would draw a large crowd. Dr Storr isn't so sure. "Well, I haven't treated very many politicians myself but I wouldn't be at all surprised. Very highly active people often have this other side to them when they go down into black despond."

It has been almost 30 years since Dr Storr was asked to contribute to a book of essays on Winston Churchill. The result, Churchill's Black Dog, remains a classic. "I thought I would get absolutely panned for it but in fact it was very much appreciated by nearly everybody but one of his private secretaries. He said he had never seen him depressed. In fact, I said that he had this underlying tendency that runs right through the Marlborough family. The Duke of Marlborough, for whom Blenheim was built, had terrible fits of depression." Other political sufferers include Oliver Cromwell, Abraham Lincoln and Napoleon.

Dr Storr is 78 and hasn't practised for years, preferring to write (his most recent book is on gurus). This is the classic profession of the depressive and, though Dr Storr is not what he calls a psychiatric depressive, he is no stranger to "ups and downs of mood of a quite severe kind". And, he says thoughtfully, he thinks his mother probably had them too.

He has the historian's gift of talking about the past as if it were yesterday and speaks of Dickens, Balzac and Dr Johnson (depressives all) as if they were acquaintances, if not friends. "Dickens was the classic example. He was a chap who never stopped, really. He was either going for 15-mile walks in the country or editing journals or acting or writing two novels at once. But if he did stop, he went down into depression instantly."

So what did Dr Storr think when he heard about Prime Minister Kjell Bondevik? "Well, I thought bad luck. But it is certainly not a reason for getting rid of him." In fact, it may be a reason to keep him. Soon, Dr Storr is delving into yet another book in his library, quoting a German psychiatrist who says that if we removed all depressives we would deprive ourselves of our most valuable people. "He says that, finally, only dried-up bureaucrats and schizophrenics would be left." Dr Storr laughs. "There's a lot to be said for that."