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Join us at the Dulwich Literary Festival to explore OCD with David Adam and Adam Rutherford.

Have you ever had a strange urge to jump from a tall building, or steer your car into oncoming traffic? You are not alone. In this fusion of science, history and personal memoir, writer David Adam talks to Adam Rutherford about the peculiar thoughts that exist within every mind, and how they drive millions of us towards obsessions and compulsions.

Bringing together the latest research, historical cases and his own journey through 20 years of living with OCD, David gives a refreshingly honest view of the power of interfering thoughts whilst challenging our preconceptions of ‘normality’ and ‘mental illness’.

David’s critically acclaimed book, The Man Who Couldn’t Stop, has been shortlisted for the 2015 Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books.

Dr David Adam is a writer and editor at Nature, one of the world’s top scientific journals. Before that he was a specialist correspondent on the Guardian for seven years, writing on science, medicine and the environment. During this time he was named feature writer of the year by the Association of British Science Writers, and reported from Antarctica, the Arctic, China and the depths of the Amazon jungle.

Dr Adam Rutherford is a science writer, broadcaster and a former Editor at the journal Nature. He is presenter of Radio 4’s Inside Science programme and on television has presented documentaries including The Gene Code, award winning Horizon documentary Playing God and most recently, The Beauty of Anatomy on BBC 4. Alongside his broadcasting achievements, his first book Creation was nominated for the Wellcome Trust Book Prize.

This event is being held at the Dulwich Literary Festival (The Old Library at Dulwich College, Dulwich Common, SE21 7LD.) For more information, venue details and booking enquiries, please visit the Dulwich Literary Festival website.