If ever a mental health diagnosis can be called ‘fashionable’, it’s ADHD, or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. The mere mention of it can trigger moans that it’s nothing but the latest ‘woke’ way to pathologise fidgeting, lack of self-discipline and bad parenting.
So if you’re in that camp who rolls their eyes everytime you hear the term, prepare to be irritated. I’m going to argue this so-called ‘new’ condition is responsible for nothing less than changing the course of British history.
ADHD is real, and it’s had consequences throughout history: few more surprising than the qualities it bestowed upon Winston Churchill.
As an author of psychology and child development books, as well as a Gestalt psychotherapist in training, first – let me say – I know it’s not possible to give an ADHD diagnosis without a full psychiatric assessment. Yet as we understand more about neurodivergency, the possibility that ADHD informed Churchill’s thinking is increasingly entertained by historians, biographers and psychiatrists.
ADHD is a neurological issue that affects the brain’s wiring and how it uses dopamine, the neuro-chemical that governs focus, concentration and pleasure-seeking. According to current Royal College of Psychiatrists guidance, ADHD affects about 3 to 4 in every 100 adults.
While it’s well known for creating challenges like restlessness, disorganisation and impulsivity, it also bestows benefits that can serve a leader well: an original way of thinking, a willingness to take risks. It can also confer higher levels of curiosity, creativity and out-of-the-box thinking. These ADHD tendencies tend to surface in childhood and Churchill displayed all from early boyhood and throughout his maverick political career.
The possibility that the wartime leader lived with attention disorder was first raised by Michael Fitzgerald
The possibility that the wartime leader lived with attention disorder was first raised by Michael Fitzgerald, Professor of Child Psychiatry at Trinity College, Dublin, almost 20 years ago in an abstract for the European Society for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry – and long before ADHD started trending on Twitter. He wrote that from his prep school days, Churchill was criticised by his teachers for ‘forgetfulness, carelessness, unpunctuality and irregularity’. ‘He always talked excessively, was impulsive in his remarks, had “fidgety hands” and a “noisy mind”,’ observed Fitzgerald.
Yet it was also noted that as a child, Churchill had a ‘phenomenal power to concentrate’ – as long as it was on subjects of interest to him, like English and History. This is typical of the hyperfocus many people with ADHD brains display when they discover something that fascinates them. Research has also found that people with ADHD brains have more difficulties with perception of passing time and are often late as a result.
A telling snapshot of Winston’s tardiness can be seen in the spring term report from St George’s, Ascot when he was ten. There he gets roundly admonished for a ‘very disgraceful’ record of being late on no less than 20 occasions. People with ADHD have also been found to take more risks, possibly because they get more dopamine rewards from sensation seeking. Winston’s impulsivity was obvious from an early age, with teachers condemning him as a boy with ‘exceedingly bad conduct, who is not to be trusted’.
Despite the savage beatings he got, which often drew blood, Winston was constantly putting himself in peril, stealing sugar from the school larder and kicking his brutal headmaster’s straw hat to pieces. Lord Michael Dobbs, author of a string of books about the wartime leader, has made similar observations. He wrote: ‘ADHD makes kids quarrelsome, inattentive, impulsive and bloody rude, which is a pretty good description of young Winston.’ On his first day at school at the age of eight he jumped up on a desk and sang a dirty ballad he’d learned from stable lads at Blenheim Palace’.
As he approached adulthood, Winston’s continuing acts of impulsivity almost proved fatal. Aged 18, he jumped off a footbridge during a chasing game with his younger brother and cousin, assuming the tree branches would break his fall. Instead, he fell 30 feet, hitting the ground hard, leaving him in a coma for three days. It didn’t stop there.
As Winston began his military career when he started at Sandhurst, aged 19, he always wanted to be in the thick of the action. By the time he turned 26, Churchill had seen action in three of England’s imperial wars, had been decorated for valour and earned a name as a war reporter renowned for his daring. By the start of the first world war, he was deeply ensconced in government. While many would have bowed out after the disaster of the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign which he helped mastermind as First Lord of the Admiralty in 1915, Churchill again put his life on the line. He made amends by joining up with the Royal Scots Fusiliers to fight on the frontline in France. There he earned the respect of his fellow soldiers by venturing out into No Man’s Land on night patrols.
One of the benefits of busy ADHD brains is that they seem particularly good at joining the dots and recognising patterns. Having survived the frontline, Churchill was the first MP to raise the alarm about Hitler’s ambitions in the early 1930s after reading his book Mein Kampf. His forward-thinking paid off in 1940 when he was asked by the King to become the wartime Prime Minister. As he fought the war from his London bunker, now known as the Churchill War Rooms, we can still see how he adapted his working conditions in ways many people with ADHD brains recognise. To this day, there are notices on the walls with the instructions: ‘There is to be no whistling or unnecessary noise in this passage’ – a bid by Churchill to reduce extraneous noises he found hard to tune out. His dislike of interruption was so great that his army of secretaries, who day and night took down his speeches and memos, used typewriters specially adapted to type more softly. Furthermore, to help organise his busy mind, Churchill came up with red ‘Action This Day’ post-it notes to help prioritise important paperwork.
People with ADHD can also find it harder to stick to a regular sleep schedule, often having bursts of energy at unsociable hours. Churchill napped in the afternoon, and then worked into the early hours. The differing levels of dopamine in ADHD brains mean people with this condition can be more drawn to seek out stimulants, like drinking and smoking, which can feel more gratifying. Of course, Churchill was known for drinking scotch and champagne for breakfast and always having a cigar constantly between his teeth, which may have also served as a fidget object to bring him calm.
Deadlines are also known to bring people with ADHD into hyperfocus. Allen Packwood, Director of the Churchill Archives Centre, observed the PM was ‘at his best in the moment, in the heat of a crisis – and at his worst during periods of inactivity and waiting’. And there never seemed a moment when Churchill’s brain was not busy. As well as being a politician, he found the time to write more than 30 volumes of history – winning the Nobel Prize for Literature. Churchill was an accomplished painter and even an amateur bricklayer, who built garden walls on his Chartwell estate. Even as he turned the tide of the war, his impulse for risk never dimmed. He was determined to be in the thick of it until the end.
The only thing that stopped him accompanying the Allied invasion of France on D-Day was an anxious, and rather firm, letter from King George VI, who pointed out the nation couldn’t afford to lose him. Still, he couldn’t be restrained for long. The Nazis hadn’t even surrendered when Churchill got his wish the following year and flew out to watch the Allied troops victoriously cross the German border at the Rhine River in March 1945. With his usual bravado, he enjoyed a picnic lunch on the banks, with Field Marshal Montgomery before stepping into enemy territory, and coming under fire.
Yet ultimately it was his risk-taking tendency that contributed to Churchill’s loss in the general election a few months later. While his daring made him the right man to win the war, Britons decided they now needed a steadier hand on the tiller and voted him out in favour of Labour (although of course it’s a testament to his bulldog spirit that he was voted back in 1951).
So, looking back over his life, is it possible that Churchill is more than a story of a brave politician who led Britain to victory in the war? Could we also see the achievement of the man named our Greatest Living Englishman from a fresh perspective? As the story of a man who harnessed his neurodivergent thinking, overcame its challenges – and used it to spectacular advantage?
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