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.

A marriage made in prison and ended in solitudeThe former wife of Glasgow gangster Jimmy Boyle reflects on their love and demons, writes Gillian Bowditch

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.