PREMONITIONS BUREAU: A True Story

This Sunday Times bestseller is the story of a strange experiment and a journey into the oddest corners of 1960s Britain and the outer edges of science and reason. Premonitions are impossible, but they come true all the time. You think of a forgotten friend and out of the blue they call. But what if you knew that something terrible was going to happen? A sudden flash, the words CHARING CROSS. Four days later, a packed express train comes off the rails outside the station. A fire in a department store or an assassination. What if you could share your vision and prevent a disaster? In 1966 John Barker, a psychiatrist working in an outdated British mental hospital, set out to investigate this very idea and established The Premonitions Bureau. He would find a network of hundreds of correspondents, from bank clerks to ballet teachers. Among them were two unnervingly gifted 'percipients'. Together the pair predicted plane crashes, assassinations and international incidents with uncanny accuracy. And then they informed Barker of their most disturbing premonition - that he was about to die. The book is an enthralling true story of madness and wonder, science and the supernatural, a journey to the most powerful and unsettling reaches of the human mind. 250pp, illustrated paperback.