What was it like to be married to Scotland's most famous prisoner?


Sara Trevelyan was independent, clever, and privileged. She was a qualified doctor who campaigned for penal reform. She fell in love with and in 1980 married Jimmy Boyle, a convicted murderer who had become a famous writer and sculptor. For the first four years of their marriage he was in jail, visits were few and their life lived under the scrutiny of the media. In this intimate memoir, we learn why Jimmy admits, “If it hadn’t been for Sara’s courage, I would still be in prison.”


She is a sure-footed guide through the extraordinary life they were called to lead. Her description of their eventual divorce is without bitterness or resentment, rather a tale of forgiveness and compassion. As a doctor and therapist, a spokeswoman for prisoner rehabilitation, and a wife and mother Sara is a courageous voyager. She realised what a journey it took to understand and to live into the quotation from Blake, “We are put on earth a little space, That we might bear the beams of love.”


For the past twenty-seven years Sara has worked as a psychotherapist and counsellor between Edinburgh and Findhorn.