The Interior Silence

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 all too often they threatened to become an exercise in self-absorption. Inspired by the ruins of an ancient Cistercian abbey at the bottom of her Norfolk Garden, she began to research the lives of the monks who once resided there and realised how much we may have to learn from monasticism. On a pilgrimage to ten monasteries round the world, Sarah discovered an unexpected capacity for solitude which enabled her, after insomnia, to experience that elusive, dreamless sleep.