Dreamless sleep

News that Sarah Sands may not have been an ideal physical match for the job of Today editor, the victim of "years of insomnia". 

Her forthcoming book, "The Interior Silence: 10 Lessons from Monastic Life", has been categorised by Google as 'Self Help'. The blurb says "Suffering from information overload, unable to sleep, Sarah Sands, former editor of the BBC's Today Programme, has tried many different strategies to de-stress... only to reject them because, as she says, all too often they threaten to become an exercise in self-absorption."

"Inspired by the ruins of an ancient Cistercian abbey at the bottom of her garden in Norfolk, she begins to research the lives of the monks who once resided there, and realises how much we may have to learn from monasticism."

Does it work ? "We follow Sands as she identifies the common characteristics of monastic life, the wisdoms to be learned from them and, behind the cloistered walls, discovers an unexpected capacity for solitude and a clarity of mind which enable her, after years of insomnia, to experience that elusive, dreamless sleep."