Lord Owen will deliver a lecture detailing how some political leaders’ ill-conceived decisions are often connected to their own illnesses. Based on research from his latest book, ‘In Sickness and In Power’, Lord Owen will focus on Sir Anthony Eden’s health during the Suez Crisis in 1956, and John F Kennedy’s struggle to control his medication for Addison’s disease during the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis a year later.

Lord Owen will also present his evidence suggesting that prior to the invasion of Iraq both George W. Bush and Tony Blair engaged in a pattern of reckless behaviour, bad judgement and operational incompetence symptomatic of an environmentally induced psychiatric order he calls the ‘hubris syndrome’. He will also touch on other leaders including Theodore Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, both of whom suffered with depression.

Lord Owen’s book ‘In Sickness and In Power: Illness in Heads of Government During the Last 100 Years’ was published in April 2008 by Methuen.