Apart from family life with her husband, daughter and grandsons, Paula always wanted to be a psychologist and later, to write novels. To begin her quest she studied at the universities of Wales, Surrey and the London School of Economics, after which she spent 40 years as an academic psychologist teaching, researching and writing about mental health, family violence, gender and power in organisations and organisational dynamics. 

Initially teaching psychology to social work and sociology students at what is now the University of East London (then NELP - North East London Polytechnic), Paula moved to Sheffield in 1990 to teach psychology to medical students, conducting research on health services including studies of leadership in the NHS, chronic health conditions (e.g. multiple sclerosis and chronic bronchitis) and gender equality issues in medical training and careers.

Eventually returning southwards, Paula headed up the Department of Health and Social Care at Royal Holloway, University of London. Shortly before retiring she trained as an organisational consultant at the Tavistock Clinic in Hampstead.

She is now Emeritus Professor at Royal Holloway.  Even though technically retired Paula has consulted to social services and universities and written  academic articles and books - the most recent focusing on  psychology and genealogy. These are all visible on this website. 

Then onto the next part of her wish-list. Paula is finishing her fifth novel 'The Man in the Tunnel'. 

Her four previous novels: 

In 'Containment' featuring Dr. Wilson Coffey, psychiatrist and reluctant spy, Wilson becomes unwittingly, and at first unwillingly, part of a team uncovering members of Werwolf - a neo-Nazi spy ring in West Germany. 

This reluctant spy re-appears in 'The Broken Couch' as he uncovers the truth about the murder of a British agent before the Nuremberg trial begins. Fascinated by deception, envy and evil along with their psychological consequences, 'The Broken Couch' features psychoanalyst Erika, a former pupil of Freud's, who develops her practice at the newly founded Tavistock Clinic in London. After World War 2 she assists in the investigation of senior war criminals at the first Nuremberg trial. But Erika's motivation is not all it seems. She shares a secret with one of the main protagonists which she needs to unravel before his death sentence is carried out. 

 'Believe Me' and 'Bystander', the first two in a campus noir crime series, feature Dr. Nancy Strong a psychological profiler. The dark sides of university life are revealed -initially through the everyday competitive relationships among academics and then by more sinister crimes.