bestpolar wrote:Which is correct please ?

"He had very little sleep"

or

"he had had very little sleep"

Thank-you!

Had can be used as a simple past tense verb meaning "possessed" or "experienced." (The present tense version would be "have.") For example, "In 1982, I had a house in the suburbs."

It can also be used as an auxiliary verb to indicate the past perfect tense, which refers to an action that occurred before something else in the past. "I had trained for several months before I ran the marathon."

You could also combine the two uses - "Before I ate the entree I had had a salad."

bestpolar wrote:Which is correct please ?

"He had very little sleep"

or

"he had had very little sleep"

The intent is to just express an event that happened in the past. Hence, simple past would be correct: He had very little sleep.

had had would be past perfect. The past perfect tense is typically used when there are two events that have happened in the past; in that case, the earlier of those two events is expressed in past perfect. This clearly is not the intent here.

p.s. Our book EducationAisle Sentence Correction Nirvana discusses this topic Demystifying "have had", "has had" and "had had", its application and examples. If someone is interested, PM me your email-id, I can mail the corresponding section.