This is a history of a family and depression. The author had a nervous breakdown after his girlfriend left and he had resigned from his job as editor of City Limits. He returned to his working class roots to be nursed back to health by his mother. Shortly after he began to get better (he was given Lithium and subsequently Prozac which enabled him to function again) his mother committed suicide. The author then began to uncover a family history of depression which is also, in a way, a history of the changing attitudes to depression and mental illness in Britain.