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.
Sara Trevelyan did not set out to have one of the most notorious marriages of the 20th century. Unlike some who marry murderers, she did not crave the dubious celebrity that dances attendance on such relationships. The number of times she has spoken publicly in the last three decades can be counted on the digits of a three-toed sloth.
In possession of a medical degree and a family fortune, there was no shortage of options for her but her marriage on January 31, 1980, in Balfron register office at the age of 29 to Jimmy Boyle — known as “Scotland’s most violent criminal” — while he was still serving a life sentence in the now defunct Barlinnie Special Unit, has been the defining event of
Sara Trevelyan graduated as a medical doctor in 1977 at St Thomas’s Hospital in London. Afterwards, she married Jimmy Boyle when he was an inmate in the Barlinnie Special Unit in 1980. After working in hospitals and medicine briefly, she left to explore mental health in the community. Here, she conducted an action research project for the Scottish Association for Mental Health. She was the co-founder and director of The Gateway Exchange in Edinburgh for eight years. Finally, for the past twenty-seven years, she has worked as a self employed counsellor and psychotherapist. Sara lives and works between Edinburgh and Findhorn. Freedom Found is her first book with Scotland Street Press.