Books

My latest book, Landscapes of Trauma (Routledge, September 2019),  focuses on going outside the normal range of psychological data (eg books, plays, poems and journals) to explore the meaning of battle for the participants.

My previous book, Memory, War and Trauma (Cambridge University Press, 2010), focused on developing theory relating to traumatic stress particularly in rleation to war. I tried to outline my views regarding the importance of narrative when understanding traumatic stress. The book contains details of some of the research we have carried out, particularly relating to war trauma. The cover is Shot at Dawn, from the National Memorial Arboretum.

The National Memorial Arboretum is the UK’s key memorial site. Back in the late 2000’s we conducted a number of interdisciplinary research seminars there and published a special issue of a Journal of War and Culture Stories, and also a co-edited book.

My colleague and I, Sue McHale, conducted research into the problem of hair loss, or alopecia, which resulted in a short book Coping with Alopecia, published by Sheldon Press. We later had two further books published by the same company, Understanding Traumatic Stress and Making Sense of Trauma.

My first book, initially published in 1992 was on Staff appraisals. I wrote it because at the time I was involved with psychometric consultancy and was asked to do something on appraisal, which I knew little about. I started reading and found that there was not that much information around, so my notes turned into a draft of a book. The draft took four days to write. It was turned down by 25 publishers before being accepted by How To Books. It went through 6 British editions and a number of foreign versions (spot the appalling mistake on the picture of the cover). I learned that writing a book is not the difficult part, it is getting a publisher to publish it!

I also co-wrote a book on Psychological Research Methods for the NEC. I don’t think this is available now: A Level Psychology: Complete Set.

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