- Horatio Nelson
- Adolf Hitler
- Diana, Princess of Wales
as he would his patients, providing for the first time convincing new psychological explanations for what they did - including defeating Napoleon, unsettling the British Royal Family and causing the Second World War.
In this trilogy of short psycho-biographies, we find that beneath the obvious differences, striking similarities occur in the backgrounds and early experience of Dr Ryder's three subjects, especially the loss of maternal love.
The Epilogue considers the psychological and historical origins of the modern cult of celebrity and asks what lessons might be learned for the future from these three famous figures of the past.
Dr Richard Ryder read experimental psychology at Cambridge and did social psychological research at Columbia University, New York, before qualifying as a clinical psychologist in Edinburgh and training in psychotherapy at the Tavistock Clinic in London.