Maureen Phillips

For over thirty years I’ve edited other people’s work in some form or other. I always did well in English at high school and I read voraciously, which is the best way to build editing, grammar, and writing skills. Back in the 1980s, I worked in the Department of Psychiatry as a secretary to Liba Tyhurst. She was editor of “TV in Psychiatry” — a publication covering the effective use of video in therapeutic practice. Liba was a Czechoslovakian, and while she was a superb psychiatrist and teacher, English grammar was not her strong point. She was impressed with the way I edited her correspondence and patient reports and invited me to be co-editor of the newsletter. That was the beginning of my “official” career as an editor.