The Sleep Room

The Sleep Room Synopsis

'Shocking' Telegraph, five stars

'Compelling' Sunday Times

'A gripping expose' Financial Times

'Lacerating' Blake Morrison, Guardian Book of the Day

'Beautifully researched, wildly unsettling' Sam Knight, author of The Premonitions Bureau

'Richly sourced and admirable in its clarity,' Dr Kate Womersley, The Lancet

Chosen as a best book of 2025 by The Times

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.

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.

'A devastating account.'
Lisa Appignanesi, author of Mad, Bad and Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors

'A gripping medical biography' Frank Tallis, author of Mortal Secrets: Freud, Vienna and the Discovery of the Modern Mind

'A chilling case study in dangerous psychiatry,' Cordelia Fine, author of Patriarchy Inc. and Testosterone Rex