always stood out for me. Always the underdog and an almost total failure by the time he was in his sixties, he found his moment of destiny in history had come when he was chosen to help the British Empire withstand the onslaughts of Hitler’s Nazism. His father and five of the seven dukes of Marlborough, his ancestors, suffered from depression, a clear sign of its genetic causes. All his life he suffered spells of depression, sinking into brooding depths of melancholy—he called it his “black dog.”