Last updated 05:34, Friday, 01 August 2008

The onset of Parkinson’s disease was a devastating blow for Peter Storey, a brilliant psychiatrist who had practised in Harley Street.

Dr Peter Storey: Had a fine, operatic tenor singing voice

Yet, though he had to give up some things, such as driving, he was determined to do all that he still could do.

And so Dr Storey, who came from a well-known Penrith family, managed to play golf, do a little gentle fell walking and take up pottery making, as well as attending evening classes that included French and conversational Italian!

In addition to all this, he read avidly – history, poetry geology and archaeology.

He was a member of Penrith Golf Club where his father, Henry Storey, had been captain in 1958 and the club’s flag flew at half mast when he died, aged 78.

Peter Brett Storey, one of four boys in the family, was born at Whitley Bay and was a pupil at the Royal Grammar School in Newcastle upon Tyne.

During World War Two the pupils were evacuated to Penrith and when they returned to the north east a year or two later, he did not go with them but joined the Mill Hill School which had been similarly moved to St Bees.

When this school’s pupils returned to London, he moved with them and it was in the capital city that his career mainly flourished.

He qualified in medicine in 1953 and worked in surgery at St Mary’s Hospital, London. He was due to be called-up for national service and, realising that this would take him away from his wife and their expected baby, he signed on as a regular soldier so that they could stay together in married quarters.

After gaining a short service commission, he was promoted captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps and served in Austria for one year and in Germany for another two.

He had intended to become a GP once back in civilian life but changed his mind while in uniform.

Army service behind him he completed three years working in acute general medicine in Portsmouth and six months in acute general neurology at the Atkinson Morley’s Hospital.

His psychiatric training took place over three years at the Institute of Psychiatry in the Maudsley Hospital and then he became a research fellow at St George’s Hospital.

Between 1965 and 1969 he was the senior lecturer in psychiatry and honorary consultant at this hospital and its medical school and then he became consultant psychiatrist at the hospital and at the Springfield Hospital.

He was also medical administrator at the Springfield Hospital for six years and was actively involved in undergraduate and post-graduate teaching.

He worked at the St George’s and Springfield Hospitals for 18 years and, for part of this time, he was also a consultant psychiatrist at the Imperial College of Science and Technology.

From 1987 to 1991 he was the visiting consultant at the Priory Hospital, Roehampton and, from 1984 on, he also practised privately from rooms in Harley Street.

During his long career, his expert services were called upon after some massive tragedies, such as the foundering of the Herald of Free Enterprise ferry and the bombing of the Pan Am airliner over Lockerbie.

He and his wife returned to make their home in Penrith in 1991 and, though Parkinson’s disease was not diagnosed for some years afterwards, it seems the early signs had been there.

After diagnosis he was determined to have a positive outlook and this led him to take up several activities, including pottery at Wetheriggs, through the University of the Third Age.

Dr Storey loved opera, had a good tenor voice and said that, had he not gone into medicine, he would like to have been an opera singer.

Over the years he had contributed many erudite articles to specialist medical and psychiatric publications.

He was co-author of the textbook Psychological Medicine, An Introduction to Psychiatry in its earlier editions but the final edition was entirely his own work.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine in 1991.

Dr Peter Storey MD, FRCP, FRCPsych, DPM leaves Ann, his wife of 56 years, their two sons, two daughters and seven grandchildren.

His funeral took place at Carlisle Crematorium. Walker’s, Penrith, made the arrangements.