The Bridge Street Press acquires Stock’s ‘chilling’ psychiatric exposé The Sleep Room in major pre-empt 

The Bridge Street Press has signed Jon Stock’s The Sleep Room, described as “a chilling true-life exposé" of the bizarre psychiatric treatments inflicted on hundreds of women in the 1960s and ’70s by charismatic British doctor William Sargant.

Sameer Rahim acquired UK and Commonwealth rights in a major pre-empt from Will Francis of Janklow and Nesbit for publication in March 2025.

Stock, an author and journalist, has previously published spy novels under his own name with HarperCollins and psychological thrillers under the pen name JS Monroe with Head of Zeus. The Sleep Room is his first non-fiction title.

To research the book, Stock tapped into the online community of survivors and obtained personal testimonies from the women involved. He also had access to Sargant’s papers at the Wellcome Collection. He said: “I’m thrilled that The Sleep Room is going to be published by The Bridge Street Press. And it’s great to be working again with Sameer, who really gets what this book is about: erudite, edge-of-your-seat storytelling.

“I’ll be exploring all those dark areas that I’ve long been fascinated by as a thriller writer: Big Pharma, the intelligence services, doctors with monstrous egos, and psychosurgery. Sargant was a champion of lobotomies and ECT, as well as narcosis and heroic doses of drugs. He once admitted that some people thought he was the work of the devil—his former patients certainly think so. It’s important to foreground their stories and try to get some justice for them too.”

Rahim said: “When I read Jon’s gripping proposal, I immediately thought this was a story that should be far better known. Sargant kept his female patients asleep for 21 hours a day before using electro-shock convulsive therapy to ‘reprogramme’ their brains. He was highly respected in his time—Robert Graves and Aldous Huxley were fans—but is now an embarrassment the medical establishment would rather forget. This is a story of a doctor’s hubris and how he got away with it. Jon’s account will bring this vital story to light.”

The book is Rahim’s first first acquisition as a publisher. “On a personal note, I am delighted to be reconnected with Jon, an old colleague from my Telegraph days,” he said.