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Explore our fascination with sleep in this joint panel discussion with the Royal Society of Literature.

Overview

Most of us will spend around a third of our lives asleep. Why do we need to do this? And what effect does it have on our creativity?

We held a panel discussion, in partnership with the Royal Society of Literature, addressing these questions and others on the enigmatic subject of sleep. 

Featuring Jonathan Coe, writer of The House of Sleep and winner of the Prix Médicis; Professor Russell Foster FRS, head of the Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute at the University of Oxford; and Deborah Levy, playwright, novelist and poet with a particular interest in the subconscious. 

The discussion was chaired by poet Lavinia Greenlaw, the first artist in residence at the Science Museum.