During the “Black Dog” days – as Churchill called his depression – after his resignation as First Lord of the Admiralty in 1915 following the Dardanelles setback, he tried to console himself as he wrote to his brother, Jack, from Hoe Farm where the family was living: “We live very simply – but with all the essentials of life well understood and well provided for – hot baths, cold champagne, new peas and old brandy.”10
