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This is an intriguing little tale of the paranormal. After the 1966 Aberfan coal mine disaster, a psychiatrist worked with a London newspaper to collect premonitions from the public in an effort to predict and prevent tragedies. A couple of psychics emerged with some chillingly accurate predictions. The narrative is meandering, despite its brevity, but the side quests are generally interesting. I‘d only recommend it for fans of parapsychology.

Many people have premonitions but what good are they? In 1966 a huge pile of coal mine slag rolled downhill and covered a school in Aberfan, a village in England, killing 144 people, many of them children. A doctor who responded to this emergency learned that people in other parts of the country had had a premonition of this event and established a premonitions bureau. This book is about both the doctor and the puzzle of premonitions.

After a national tragedy in the 60s, British psychiatrist John Barker (no relation) wanted to know if premonition could have prevented it, and set out to study this idea. Unfortunately, he was a terrible scientist prone to confirmation bias and Knight is no better at putting a book together to tell a cohesive story. Fun premise with some interesting bits throughout, but really poorly executed overall.

Book 162📚 2.5⭐️

Maybe I need to read descriptions better😂 I thought this would read more like short stories about real premonitions that came true. Although there was a bit of that, it focused on the real Premonitions Bureau from the 60‘s.
An interesting read but a bit slow and hard to follow at times.

Did some more McDonald‘s tourism this morning. It was so windy and chill by this point in my bike ride that I decided to get an enormous latte instead of the black coffee I planned on.

I‘m 155 pages into THE PREMONITIONS BUREAU now, and I‘ve pinpointed why it hasn‘t clicked: it reads like an assigned story, not something Sam Knight has a true, deep interest in. It‘s still good, but that authorial distance keeps it from being great.

Penny, Geo‘s big sister, kept me company while I started THE PREMONITIONS BUREAU. It‘s pretty good so far, but I haven‘t found that click moment yet. Hopefully it‘s coming soon.

Non-fiction books that lack endnotes or references are really annoying. This was an engrossing, quick read but I couldn‘t love it without the ability to cross reference. The author quotes Edgar Allan Poe from 1875 (by which time the author was long dead) so I doubted the book‘s accuracy. It‘s still a good story about a psychiatrist‘s attempts to study foresight with the help of a fame-seeking newspaper reporter.

Trying out a new editing app. Wdyt?
This is the first time I have ever heard of this secret British government agency. Dr. John Barker was a psychiatrist at Shelton Hospital. Convinced that there were individuals who were "sensitive" & that they could predict future disasters, he set to work with a journalist at Evening Standard. He interviewed dozens of people, intending to create an agency made up of people who could see future events. ⭐⭐⭐?

Fascinating exploration of a moment in time, where the paranormal, physic premonitions & unexplained felt, emotion intensities were gathering mainstream attention.Less about the Bureau - set up by the Evening Standard, & more about the characters and national vibe that demanded a pause on the thought that everything could be explained by science. Knight keeps our attention on eccentricity and passion - as well as taking us down some side alleys !

Just scrolling through Waterstones' website minding my own business when this book caught my eye. It sounds so good. I love truth-is-stranger-than-fiction type books.

Check below for synopsis!!🔽