James Middleton: My dog convinced me to not take my own life

Princess of Wales’s brother says Ella was instrumental in supporting him through his ‘lowest ebb’

James Middleton reveals he considered taking his own life but was stopped by thoughts of what his dog would do without him.
In an extract from his forthcoming memoir published in the Daily Mail, Mr Middleton, the Princess of Wales’s brother, describes the night Ella, his dog, “saved his life”.
The 37-year-old entrepreneur first opened up about his mental health difficulties in 2019, describing his depression as a “cancer of the mind”.
Mr Middleton, an ambassador for the “Pets as Therapy” charity has previously written in The Telegraph about the restorative role played by his dogs, saying: “Forcing myself to go out with them quickly makes me forget my struggles.”
In an extract from his book “Meet Ella” published in the Daily Mail, the mental health awareness advocate recounts how, when tasked with giving a high-stakes Bible reading at the royal wedding of his sister to Prince William in 2011, it was Ella’s calming presence that sustained him through rehearsals.
The passage also reveals for the first time how instrumental Ella, his cherished cocker spaniel, has been in supporting him during his “lowest ebb”.
In the extract, Mr Middleton revealed that at 2am on a November night in 2017, his depression was so severe that he felt life was “no longer worth living”. In the lead-up to this crisis, he described how he was unable to sleep or eat.
In the days before contemplating suicide, Mr Middleton wrote that he isolated himself: “I hide behind a double-locked door, unreachable.”
In the early hours of the November morning, he described being gripped by a feeling of suffocation. He wrote that he was reluctant to face late-night revellers on the street, choosing to exit his flat through a skylight onto the property’s flat roof.
In the Daily Mail extract, the 37 year-old wrote that at this moment he wanted to “escape from myself”, saying that: “Dark thoughts crowd in on me. What can I do to make them stop? I think about jumping from the rooftop. Who would find me? A passing taxi-driver? A neighbour?”
But that night he is not the only one who can’t sleep – and when Mr Middleton looked down the skylight into his flat, he described seeing Ella’s “gentle eyes looking back up at me.”
It was the presence of his canine friend that ultimately persuaded him not to end his life. As Mr Middleton paced around the rooftop, he repeatedly checked the skylight – and every time he looked down, Ella was waiting for him.
“Her brown eyes are still staring intently at me, soulful and pleading, and as my gaze locks on hers again, my brain quietens,” he wrote.
Mr Middleton said it was imagining what Ella would do in the hours after his death that finally convinced him not to end his life.
He wrote: “In that instant I know I will not jump. What would happen to Ella if I died? How long would she wait alone in the flat for someone to find her?”
Summing up the critical role his dog played, he wrote: “She is the reason I do not take that fatal leap. She is Ella, the dog who saved my life.”
Meet Ella by James Middleton (Radar, £22), to be published on Sept 26.