The Sleep Room

THE SLEEP ROOM is a chilling expose of the bizarre psychiatric treatments inflicted on hundreds of women in the 1960s/70s - among them the actor Celia Imrie, who has been interviewed for the book - by a sinister and charismatic British doctor, William Sargant. Sargant kept his patients asleep for 21 hours a day, before using electro-shock convulsive therapy to "reprogramme" their brains to cure illnesses such as anorexia and schizophrenia. This is the first proper account of a scandal that the medical establishment would rather you didn''t know about. Journalist Jon Stock has full access to the Sargant archive at the Wellcome Collection and has moving testimonies from survivors including Celia Imrie. He also explores the doctor''s murky links with the CIA and MI5''s mind-control programmes. The Sleep Room reveals a time when all-powerful male doctors could manipulate and abuse their female patients with impunity. And tells the story of a time when medics genuinely believed you could reprogramme people''s brains.

Auteur

Jon Stock is a novelist and journalist. After reading English at Cambridge, he became was a freelance reporter, writing investigative features for The Observer, Private Eye, GQ, The Telegraph and **The Independent. For two years, he was a foreign correspondent in New Delhi before returning to become Weekend Editor of the Telegraph*in 2005. He became a fulltime author in 2015, writing psychological thrillers as JS Monroe and spy thrillers under his own name. *Find Me, his first JS Monroe novel, has been translated into 14 languages. Dead Spy Running, part of the Daniel Marchant spy trilogy, was optioned by Warner Bros, with a screenplay written by Oscar-winner Stephen Gaghan. Jon is currently the Royal Literary Fund writing fellow at Mansfield College, Oxford and is a trustee of the Marlborough Literature Festival.

Texte du rabat

The Royal Waterloo Hospital, London in the 1960s. Six young women lie asleep on low beds. Day and night no longer exist, extinguished by a potent cocktail of antipsychotic, sedative and anti-depressant drugs. The women are taken from their beds by the nurses and given electroconvulsive therapy before being put to sleep again. All under the watchful eye of Dr William Sargant.

THE SLEEP ROOM is a chilling exposé of Sargant's bizarre psychiatric treatments that were inflicted on hundreds of women with mental illness - among them the actor Celia Imrie. At the story's centre is a sinister and charismatic doctor, who was a hugely influential figure in post-war British society - lauded by Robert Graves and Aldous Huxley as well regularly appearing on the BBC. When Sargant died in 1988, the obituaries were glowing.

But since then, women treated without their consent and with often horrific side-effects lasting decades have been campaigning to tell the truth about Sargant. Author Jon Stock tells these women's stories as well delving into the murky history of Sargant's links with the CIA and MI5, both of which took a close interest in his efforts to reprogramme the human mind.

As compulsive as a thriller, The Sleep Room finally gets to the truth of a scandal at the heart of the British medical establishment.