OLIVER SACKS: MADE IN MAPESBURY
As part of the Brent2020 London Borough of Culture, the Mapesbury Residents’ Association present a celebration of one if its most eminent figures

Oliver Sacks: Made in Mapesbury

Described by The New York Times as ‘The poet laureate of medicine’, Oliver Sacks was a neurologist and a world famous, bestselling writer, the author of fourteen seminal, beautifully written books, which have inspired films, plays and operas.

They include: Awakenings, about a group of patients who had survived the encephalitis lethargica pandemic of the 1920s, but were left in a frozen, catatonic state from which Oliver aroused them. It inspired the 1990 Academy Award winning film starring Robin Williams and Robert de Niro and a play by Harold Pinter; The Man who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales, stories of patients struggling to adapt to often bizarre worlds of neurological disorder, which inspired the opera by Michael Nyman; Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain; Hallucinations and two memoirs – Uncle Tungsten, which describes his early life in Mapesbury and On the Move, which recounts his life and work in America from the early 1960s to shortly before his death at the age of 82.

Oliver Sacks: Made in Mapesbury delves into the story of Oliver’s early life and the relationship he had with his family home. He was born at 37 Mapesbury Road, London NW2 on 9 July 1933 and it remained his London home for almost sixty years. We explore the house (now the British Psychotherapy Foundation) and then there is a discussion of his life and work by Kate Edgar, his long-standing editor; Bill Hayes, a writer and photographer who was Oliver’s partner during his later years; Professor Jonathan Cole, a consultant in Clinical Neurophysiology at Poole Hospital and a Professor at the University of Bournemouth; and Suzanne O’Sullivan, a consultant neurologist at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery and author, most recently of the highly acclaimed The Sleeping Beauties.

When registering for this free event, you will also have access to screenings of two documentaries on Oliver Sacks from the BBC Imagine series.

21 September 2021 at 18.30 – Oliver Sacks: Made in Mapesbury

23 September 2021 at 20.00 – Imagine: Tales of Music and the Brain

27 September 2021 at 20.00 – Imagine: The Man Who Forgot How To Read and Other Stories