Mr Chartwell is Rebecca Hunt’s stunning debut novel in which she turns Winston Churchill’s “black dog” (how he referred to his depression) into a physical and insidious dog that assimilates himself into all areas of Churchill’s life.

July, 1964. At home in Kent Winston Churchill wakes to a visitor: someone he hasn’t seen for a while, a dark, mute bulk, watching him.It’s Mr Chartwell.

In Battersea, Esther Hammerhans, young, vulnerable and alone, answers the door to her new lodger. Through the glass she sees a vast silhouette. It’s Mr Chartwell.

Mr Chartwell is a large, black dog.

He is charismatic and dangerously seductive, but as their lives are slowly drawn together, can Esther and Winston withstand his strange, powerful charms and strong hold? For Mr Chartwell’s motives are far darker and deeper than they seem.

‘Charming, funny, moving, finely crafted and engagingly evocative’ >Independent

‘Charming, original, rewarding, entertaining’ Financial Times

‘Brilliantly original and thought-provoking. Hunt tackles a serious topic with humour and intelligence’ Sunday Express

With Mr. Chartwell, Rebecca Hunt was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and shortlisted for the Galaxy National Book Awards New Writer of the Year.

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Mr Chartwell Author Reading

Click here to watch Rebecca Hunt reading an extract from Mr Chartwell.

5.30 a.m.

Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill’s mouth was pursed as if he had a slice of lemon hidden in there. Now eighty-nine, he often woke early. Grey dawn appeared in a crack between the curtains, amassing the strength to invade.

 Churchill prepared himself for the day ahead, his mind putting out analytical fingers and then coming at the day in a fist, ready for it. A view of the Weald of Kent stretched beyond the window, lying under an animal skin of mist. Bordered to the west by Crockham Hill and to the east by Toys Hill, Churchill’s red-brick house sat in a shallow coomb, enclosed by a horseshoe of ancient forest that opened in a long, green horizon to the south.

Although fully awake, Churchill’s eyes remained closed. On his back, the bedcovers pulled and folded at his waist, he lay with his arms alongside the quilted log of his body. On the other side of the house, Clementine lay sleeping in her four-poster bed. He thought of his wife, wishing to be with her.

 But Churchill wasn’t alone in his bedroom; something else in the dark, a mute bulk in the corner, a massive thing, was watching him with tortured concentration.

 Churchill was aware of its presence. He didn’t need to see or hear it to know it was there; he had more of a sense, an instinctual certainty when it appeared. Its eyes pressed on him hotly, imploring him to wake up. It willed him to move. After hours of waiting it ached with the desire to explode from the corner and shake him.

Churchill spoke in a barely audible whisper, not that it mattered – he knew the thing would be listening.

‘Bugger off .’ There was a long silence as the thing scrabbled to compose itself. Churchill could feel it grinning filthily in the blackness. It said with unsuppressed relish,‘No.’

 8.30 a.m.

 In a terraced house in Battersea, Esther Hammerhans came tearing down the stairs with one arm through a cardigan sleeve, the rest fl apping at her legs, and turned off the hob. The kettle stopped its screaming and threw out hysterical clouds of steam. Esther found the teapot and filled it with hot water, some spilling over the work surface. The tea leaves had been forgotten, something she discovered fi ve minutes later, after a wild campaign with the washing up. ‘Idiots!’ she cursed the tea leaves, beating them into the water with a spoon.

Then she put on the entire cardigan. This seemed a good step, a positive move. A moment passed where she calmed herself; it was important to look calm. Mr Chartwell would arrive at any minute; it was important that the first impression was a good one. She admired the yellow cabinet doors and drawers which she had scrubbed earlier, the walls painted a paler yellow and lit with a fluorescent tube on the ceiling. The dark orange tiled floor had been mopped, pots of spices and dried herbs arranged neatly on wiped white gloss shelves. The blue Formica-topped kitchen table was arranged with a vase of flowers, a stainless steel candlestick there for show as if she used it every day. Sugar cubes were stacked into the only small bowl without chips. A tasteless bowl designed to resemble a cockerel; Esther had hidden the cockerel-head lid in a drawer.

Esther went to the mirror hung near the window and examined herself, seeing a wispy, long-haired person with a delicate underbite. She had always been slim, slimmer now and a bit bare with it. The mirror returned a smile which expressed fatigue, a varnish of melancholy painted behind the features. The general package, Esther decided, would not benefit from further examination.

 The boxroom she wanted to rent didn’t have many things but it did have a garden view. Light mobbed every crevice from the first gloss of daybreak, and this would flaunt the room’s extreme cleanliness. The carpet, meticulously hoovered, had come up well and showed its brilliant ochre colour, the colour of a toy lion. A decorative earthenware tile hung on the wall above the bed – a painted scene of a hillside village in Greece, the white cottages whirling with violently green and orange foliage, thick black lines everywhere as if drawn with a thumb. Her friend Beth had loaned her a single bed, a very modest and old bed which didn’t look so humble when dressed with fresh sheets and blankets. The light bulb was decorated with a woven wicker shade, purchased last week, which Esther felt gave the room a sense of style. A new wardrobe completed the room’s transformation into a bedroom. If necessary she would throw in the occasional use of her car.

But – disappointment – only one note of interest had answered her advert, silently hand-delivered yesterday evening from a Mr Chartwell requesting a viewing in the morning. The lettering was savage and strange, pressed so hard into the paper the commas were torn through. It seemed to Esther this note had been written by someone deeply unfamiliar with a pen, someone who held it like a pole they wanted to bang into the ground. Finding the note, Esther had creased it in a fist, stunned suddenly at the idea of sharing her home, the thought of the intrusion making her gently seasick.

 Maybe, thought Esther, now in the front room at the record player, she should put some music on to insinuate that she was a hip landlady as well as a calm one. Mr Chartwell was probably a music fan; he would appreciate the charts. The Rolling Stones were number one with ‘It’s All Over Now’, and Esther had bought the single. She busied herself with this task, supremely confident. Placing the needle on the record, the song blared at an obscene volume, Mick Jagger’s voice screaming through the tissues of her head. Esther snatched the needle off .

 The music was abandoned and silence restored. Then, just as quickly, it was overthrown.

The doorbell buzzed. In the kitchen, Esther stood motionless, feeling the hoof-kick of nerves. A few seconds passed. The doorbell called again. ‘Right, here we go, I suppose,’ she said to a photograph of Michael on the windowsill. That funny chin angled left, broad-shouldered in a blue denim shirt, the top two buttons undone. His big face was captured in a moment of serenity, grey eyes trained on something beyond the sights of the camera. Esther imagined what he would say to her and then his voice was in her ears, summoned from a library of memories, talking as if through a seashell. He made a few comments, all practical. His words were encouraging so she stayed there, listening. I miss you, Esther said to Michael. He whispered something, a hand on her cheek. Then the doorbell issued its instructions with new ferocity. Michael clicked off . Esther went to let Mr Chartwell in.

The first thing she noticed was that Mr Chartwell was a colossal man. He filled the porch with the silhouette of a mattress, darkening the pane of frosted glass. As she walked towards the front door a weird odour developed and intensified, emanating from the doorway. It smelt like an ancient thing that had been kept permanently damp; a smell of cave soil.

Rebecca Hunt in conversation about Mr. Chartwell.

What prompted you to write a book about such an odd subject?
The central premise for Mr Chartwell, of Churchill’s ‘Black Dog’ being an individual character who would then be free to visit and ‘belong’ to other people besides Churchill occurred to me when I was walking home from work. To me, the possibilities this opened up were fascinating, and I wanted to allow them to develop. Although the book does contain a colossal talking hound, the foundations of the story explore very real subjects and situations – courage and loss, hope, depression and love - which the dog enabled me to access. The private thoughts and emotions of the other characters could be translated into dialogue in a way they might not have been without the dog as a separate, independent entity. My way of discussing the subject, although admittedly pretty odd, provided me with a method of engaging with a conversation that was important to me.

Why do you think depression is like the visitation of a black dog?
I think to describe depression as a ‘Black Dog’ works in a series of ways. The phrase brings to mind a faithful but dangerous companion who exhibits a jealous and aggressive devotion. I like the way it converts the typical characteristics of a dog into something much darker – the loyalty becomes isolating, guarding its master from friends and loved ones; the predatory instincts focus on a very specific prey. This dog is not so much a best friend as a determined friend which hunts you.

You have trained as a painter: How different is painting from writing? How did your training help you when you were writing?
I have found the process of painting and writing to be surprisingly similar! Both involve trying to express and explore ideas. Both can also be extremely frustrating and satisfying. And with both, working through the problems and false starts, through the near-misses and wildly miscalculated potential solutions, there comes a brilliant time at the end, where I feel that I have got as close as I’m able to the objective I set out at the beginning. In terms of the training I received at art school, I think that the basis of having to find a medium and method in which to convey an idea was very helpful to me with the book. The three hugely enjoyable years I spent at Central Saint Martins involved talking about ideas and trying to convert them into something. It didn’t matter if the result was good, bad, ugly, or tragically weird, we were free to experiment. This spirit of experimentation is what I hope I’ve taken with me since leaving college.

Are you going to continue painting?
Yes I am. I admit that my studio has been woefully neglected for a while because Mr Chartwell has been my main priority, but I am going to amend this in the next few days. For me, painting is a source of great enjoyment, as writing is, and I wouldn’t want to give up either. Sometimes the balance is off, and one takes a serious cut in time and attention, but it’s only a hiatus and not an end.

What are you writing next?
I have been thinking a lot and making pages of notes, gearing up to begin writing the next book. The ideas are still quite loose at the moment, and I’m spending time filtering through them. It sounds ridiculous, but I found it quite sad in a strange way to be leaving the characters in Mr Chartwell, probably because I had spent such an enormous amount time with them. Now other characters are on the horizon it feels very exciting to be starting something new.