The Mental Health of Beautiful Minds Quiz

Answer: Winston Churchill

Churchill suffered from thunderous bad moods or what his family called the 'Black Dog'. Depressed after losing power in the 1945 general election, he threw himself into his War Memoirs.

He won the 1953 Nobel Literature Prize for 'his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values'.

He even used his speech impediment to dramatic effect - his inability to pronounce the letter 's' properly, in his references to the 'Narzis'.

Answer: Abraham Lincoln

Ironically, his melancholic nature meant he was above all a realist. This perceived character flaw that would today disqualify him from major office equipped him with the intestinal fortitude and moral will to lead the nation through a civil war.

Honest Abe was assassinated whilst attending the play 'Our American Cousin' on April 15, 1865 by John Wilkes Booth, a Confederate spy and actor.

Eerily, Abraham had related a dream about a presidential assassination to his main bodyguard Ward Hill Lamon, but had joked it off with 'In this dream it was not me, but some other fellow, that was killed'.

Answer: Howard Hughes

Despite his affliction, he still managed to build a movie empire, break world aviation records, bed Hollywood starlets and pioneer the Hughes Aerospace Corporation. He also successfully fought the IRS and founded a tax-exempt medical research foundation which is now worth billions.

The 2004 Martin Scorsese film 'The Aviator' with Leonardo DiCaprio and Cate Blanchett dramatised Howard's descent into madness.

On his death he reputedly left a handwritten will which included a bequest of $156 million to a gas-station owner. After a considerable legal battle, this will was declared void and his $2.5 billion estate was split amongst family.

Answer: Patty Duke

As a child actress she won Best Supporting Actress in 1962 for her portrayal of the teenage Helen Keller in 'The Miracle Worker'.

An author of 'Brilliant Madness: Living with Manic Depressive Illness', she is an activist for various mental health causes.

Her son, Sean Astin, is best known for his role as Samwise Gamgee in the 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy.

Answer: Ludwig Wittgenstein

As a scholar, Wittgenstein shared a school with a certain young Austrian named Adolph Hitler, who later invaded his homeland in 1938. Wittgenstein, having established his genius in his opus 'Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus' escaped the depredations of the Nazis as chair of Philosophy at Cambridge.

As Jews, his family were forced to pay the Nazis a classification fee or 'Befreiung', whereby they were recorded as Aryan/Jewish mongrels and spared from the concentration camp. The fee for this life-preserving extortion was reputedly 1.7 tonnes of gold.

Answer: Syd Barrett

Syd was a founding member of Pink Floyd, but he quit the band after apparently suffering a drug induced mental breakdown. During one concert he spent the whole evening de-tuning his guitar, whilst another incident he reputedly attacked his girlfriend with a mandolin.

The later incarnation of Pink Floyd, fronted by Roger Waters, recorded the song 'Shine On You Crazy Diamond' as a dedication to the eccentric genius behind the band that has sold over 250 million albums. Syd watched the recording of this song unrecognised by the band, his once rock-star looks dishevelled into an overweight hulk who had shaved his hair and his eyebrows.

He died in 2006 from pancreatic cancer, living in his late mother's semi-detached home, and having shunned the occasional annoyances of paparazzi for decades.

Answer: Tennessee Williams

The turbulent genius behind A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof endured his own battles with depression, alcoholism and drug abuse. He suffered persecution as a homosexual in the deeply conservative McCarthy era, and fell into a decade long depression following the death of his partner Frank Merlo from cancer.

His death was also controversial, with his brother claiming he was murdered, whilst a police report suggested he choked on a bottle cap when under the influence of prescription drugs.

Answer: Virginia Woolf

Virginia cast a powerful literary shadow with her feminist novels and essays, exploring whether Shakespeare's sister would be denied the opportunities of her male counterpart in 'A Room of One's Own'.

The 2002 Oscar winning film 'The Hours' is set during Virginia Woolf's creation of 'Mrs Dalloway'. The film's opening sequence starts with Virginia's 1941 suicide, where she filled her pockets with rocks and threw herself into the River Ouse.

Answer: John Nash

Known as 'The Phantom of Fine Hall', Nash was a shadowy creature at Princeton University, famous for scribbling complex blackboard equations in the middle of the night.

After repeated hospitalisations in the late 50s and early 60s, Nash gradually recovered from schizophrenia and depression.

Helped by a supportive environment that accepted his eccentricities, this genius of 20th century mathematics won the 1994 Nobel Economics Prize for his work on his game theory.

Answer: Vivien Leigh

The beautiful star of 'Gone with the Wind' says she was 'tipped into madness' when playing Tennessee Williams' creation Blanche DuBois.

David Niven's very readable bestseller 'The Moon's a Balloon' recounts one of Leigh's breakdowns when 'Her hair was hanging down in straggly clumps; the mascara and make-up made a ghastly streaked mask down to her chin; one false eyelash was missing; her eyes were staring and wild. She was naked and looked quite, quite mad'.

Her disorder may have contributed to a turbo-charged sex drive, about which her husband Laurence Olivier reportedly complained 'She's wearing me out'. However, she suffered from tubercolosis, which killed her.

The brilliant beauty twice won best actress Oscars - in 1939 for 'Gone with the Wind' and in 1952 for 'A Streetcar Named Desire'.