The Sleep Room: A Very British Medical Scandal
Jon Stock
Apr 2025 · Little, Brown Book Group
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About this audiobook
'A gripping medical biography that encompasses sex, drugs, brainwashing, intelligence operations, murder and several scandals' Frank Tallis, author of Mortal Secrets: Freud, Vienna and the Discovery of the Modern Mind
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 predatory 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 M15, 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.
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 predatory 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 M15, 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.
About the author
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.
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