Post ‘retirement’: in memory of William ‘Bill’ Yule (1940–2023)

Bill Yule was Emeritus Professor of Applied Child Psychology at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (IoPPN), King’s College, London. His work and achievements up to his retirement in 2005 are documented in the BCP Festschrift published in his honour (Smith et al., 2005), and recorded in many obituaries published in the national press (The Guardian, The Times), and elsewhere (The Psychologist), following his sudden death in November 2023. Bill was the co-founder (with Ray Hodgson) and first editor of this Journal. This commemoration highlights his equally important post-retirement contributions and the recollections and reflections of close friends and colleagues in the contributions to this Special Section.

Unsurprisingly perhaps, there is no clear demarcation between what Bill did before his ‘official’ retirement and his post-retirement activities, other than the move from his office (with his filing cabinet) to other workspaces in the IoPPN. Shortly before his death (and unrelated), he finally moved out of the Institute hot-desk facility (with his filing cabinet), to working from home.

Certain key events occurred during this ‘retirement’ period. Bill’s work on trauma in children received wider recognition including the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies in 2005 and a Honorary Fellowship of the British Psychological Society (BPS) in 2006. His contributions were recognised by his European psychology colleagues, who awarded him the Aristotle Prize of the European Federation of Psychologists’ Associations (EFPA). He was the driving force in setting up the BPS Crisis, Disaster and Trauma Psychology Section, becoming its inaugural chair in 2013. In 2017, he chaired the BPS Presidential Taskforce on Refugees and Asylum Seekers. Then, in 2021, under his stewardship, an official UK charity, the Children and War Foundation-UK was established, with strong parallels and personal links to its Norwegian counterpart which he also helped found. The UK charity for him was a crowning achievement and he continued to be active as a Trustee and Treasurer until his passing.

From early on, even before retirement, and whenever the opportunities arose, Bill would travel to war-affected regions such as the city of Mostar in Bosnia and Herzegovina, to get some sense of what children living in those areas had experienced, and importantly, meet the people with whom he would be working. This pattern of ‘grounding’ and personal contact continued post-retirement. For instance, since the 2014 invasion of Ukraine, he visited Lviv and was engaged in training and supervising professionals there to run therapeutic groups. Following the 2022 invasion he remained involved with colleagues from Ukraine, delivering remote training, supporting the production of graphic educational material and the innovative Rucksack Project developed by his Ukrainian colleagues (see Ougrin et al., below). His work on trauma and the delivery of services to regions affected by crises and war continued via video during the Covid pandemic.

Despite increasing difficulties with physical mobility, Bill continued to travel for both work and holidays. In the months before his death, he had visited Norway for a Children and War Foundation Board Meeting, to Southern Italy for a holiday with his wife Bridget, and then to Amsterdam for a family-related event.

Bill’s continuing outside interests and activities provided a useful and relaxing diversion from the emotional challenges of his focus on trauma. He remained a devotee and authority on crime fiction, with an ever-expanding collection of books extending from well before the e-book age. He was a keen gardener with a well-used greenhouse. Watercolour paints accompanied him on his wide-ranging work-related and holiday travels (see Dyregrov, below). From his home in South London, he was easily able to visit the variety of London art galleries and theatres, of both of which he was particularly fond. His enjoyment of theatre extended to performance roles in local community-based events, including stints as Santa Claus.

With his unique perspective, dating back to the 1960s, Bill continued lecturing to trainees embarking on their three-year clinical psychology doctorate at the IoPPN, the last in 2023, providing a historical context and perspective for future practitioners. This perspective also underpinned his important history of the Maudsley Course published in 2015 (Yule, 2015).

Bill is survived by his wife Bridget, daughter Claire, son Alastair and grandchildren.

The William Yule archive is held by the King’s College London College Archive https://tinyurl.com/4unyk657

Bill Yule – Recollections and reflections: Remembered by his colleagues

Norway

A Norwegian writer, Jon Fosse, was awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 2023. In his wonderful acceptance speech, he said he tried to give words to silent speech. Bill listened to children who faced loss, war and disaster and gave words to their experiences. He wanted to grasp their experiences, not by hearing them filtered through the parents telling, but directly from the children themselves.

Deeply concerned about inadequate care for children amid war and disaster, he, alongside Norwegian and British colleagues, founded the Children and War Foundation (CAW) in Norway almost 25 years ago. He was instrumental in the development of manuals for group follow-up of children following both war and disaster, as well as a manual for writing about trauma that could be used with large groups, and a grief manual for those who lost loved ones. He dedicated much time and effort to train group leaders here and around the world. Additionally, he championed research to validate the scientific rigor of the Foundation’s methods, ensuring their evidence-based nature, leaving an enduring legacy in the realms of mental health and humanitarian aid focused on the needs of children and families. Bill was also a beloved mentor, guiding numerous students and colleagues with wisdom and kindness. Together we discussed grieving and traumatised children, drawing on our clinical experience, testing out ideas and broadening our understanding. He cannot be separated from the work he devoted so much energy and time to – but here I also remember Bill as a friend.

Bill was a frequent visitor to Norway to attend meetings of the Foundation’s Board, participating in developing its policies and practices. While here he would take a holiday break with us, leaving us with warm and good memories of and with Bill: seeing him among flowers at our summer house at the ocean, using his water colours to capture the moment; watching his fascination for colours and in many ways, helping me see clouds and nature that I took for granted; refusing to put on sun lotion and looking like a cooked lobster for days at end; sitting on the deck in the sun, happily enjoying himself with a new crime novel; his excitement at having a cod on the line; enjoying midsummer evenings with bonfires, often with endless rain too; and travelling on the coastal liner, up and down the coast of Norway with Bridget and good friends from several continents. Memorable too, his kindness through book and wine gifts; watching him eagerly opening cards from his children and family and friends on his birthday; and always with new suggestions for my reading. I discovered so many good crime writers through him.

We express our gratitude for his significant contribution to the Foundation and for the countless hours he dedicated to advocating for and improving the circumstances of children affected by war and disaster. But foremost, I remember a devoted friend who was there through the years to support and care through happy and sad times. He was one of a kind. Bill, I miss you dearly.

Atle Dyregrov

Professor Emeritus, Centre for Crisis Psychology, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway

… and remember reading

For many years now, Bill’s name has been synonymous with research and treatment on childhood trauma, but his early career was marked by equally illustrious contributions in a quite different arena: the understanding and remediation of children’s reading problems. I completed my PhD on reading under his supervision many years ago, but it was only recently that I had asked him when his interest in the topic began. With a trademark twinkle he told me that his interest had been piqued when he was asked to assess an eight year-old boy for a colleague. The assessment involved asking the child to read a list of single words out loud, with no context to help decipher them. The child did well at first but came to a stop at the word ‘shoe’. For anyone who struggles with reading, words like ‘shoe’ are a nightmare, because decoding their letters only takes you so far in working out how to pronounce them. The child stared at the word for a long time, Bill smiling encouragement. In the end, the child gave up the unequal struggle and, with a broad grin, produced the one four-letter word he knew definitely did begin with the letters ‘sh..’. Bill was hooked.

From these unlikely beginnings Bill went on to become a leading figure in research on childhood reading problems, bringing to that field the same careful attention to definition and measurement that characterised all his work. With Michael Rutter (now also sadly deceased), he undertook the first epidemiological studies in the area, documenting the extent of these highly impairing difficulties in the child population, and their overlaps with emotional and behavioural problems.

At the same time – and again prefiguring his later work – he saw it as crucial to complement these empirical studies by developing and testing interventions to equip teachers with the skills to improve children’s reading. In more recent years his direct involvement in reading research reduced, but he continued to encourage me and my colleagues in follow-up studies of the samples he had established in the 1960s and 1970s and remained fascinated to see the insights they produced.

He cared deeply about children and their struggles, whether with traumatic experiences or recalcitrant words on a page. He was a warm and inspiring mentor, colleague and friend, and will be much missed in the world of reading as well as in his more recent endeavours.

Barbara Maughan

Emeritus Professor of Developmental Epidemiology, Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Neuroscience, King’s College LondonLondon, UK

The Ukrainian legacy

‘Could you tell me more about your nightmare? Whose nightmare is it?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Whom does it belong to? To your mom? To me?’

‘No, it is my nightmare.’

‘Ah! If that’s your nightmare, you can be in charge of how it ends, can you not?’

This little anecdote, a conversation that took place between Bill Yule, and many children across the years, serves as a perfect illustration of what he believed in and what he used as a foundation for his groundbreaking program Teaching Recovery Techniques (TRT), the power of ownership. In a situation of extreme fear and adversity, we tend to feel helpless and weak. It seems that there is nothing that we can do to change things, to make them better. Yet, the worst thing that one can do in such a situation is give up control. It often happens that we not only give up control over the external situation but most importantly over our own lives. We forget that there are always small or bigger things in our routine life that we can influence. This is particularly true for children or adults with PTSD, who often feel completely out of control even once they have left the site of immediate danger. They can be tortured by nightmares and flashbacks that come and go as they please, fears and anxieties that make it impossible to function. The road to recovery starts with taking back this sense of ownership over one’s life bit by bit.

Bill Yule came to Ukraine in 2014, following the initial phase of the Russian invasion. With Laura Timms, a colleague from Children and War, he trained a cohort of mental health professionals in Teaching Recovery Techniques, with further training in 2015. TRT is an evidence-based intervention designed to help children and adolescents cope with the emotional aftermath of traumatic events. It is a structured program that combines elements of psychoeducation, cognitive behavioural therapy, and skill-building exercises for both children and their caregivers. It aims to equip children with the tools to manage flashbacks, avoidance and hyperarousal resulting from traumatic experiences. TRT provides a range of very practical tools that empower children and caregivers to address the very raw consequences of trauma most immediately and effectively. Bill deeply believed in the power of education and support to empower young individuals to overcome the challenges posed by trauma. Around the time of his initial visits, online psychological interventions started showing promise (Rakovshik et al., 2013). This vehicle of delivery turned out to be crucial in subsequent years in Ukraine.

The situation in Ukraine during 2014 was marked by the beginning of what would become the greatest humanitarian disaster in Europe for decades, leading to significant psychological distress among children. It was not clear how protracted and bloody this conflict would turn out to be. No-one could have predicted that we would be talking about millions of affected children 10 years later. One thing was clear. There were going to be children who would be affected by the war; many more than in any European conflict since the Second World War. Recognising the urgent need for effective interventions, Bill collaborated with the Ukrainian Catholic University and other local organisations and professionals to implement TRT in the region. The TRT-based curriculum is now recommended by the Ministry of Science and Education of Ukraine for implementation in Ukrainian schools.

Many well-meaning Western psychologists have come to Ukraine since 2014. Most of them left, bewildered by the complexity of bureaucracy and the chaos of the health system galvanised by the hybrid war unleashed by Russia. Bill came and Bill remained involved. He was one of few people who realised that the impact of the war was already there and that things could get a lot worse. We now have data on thousands of children treated in Ukraine (Yavna et al., 2024) and the number is growing every day. What Bill did in 2014 saved countless lives and prevented a lot of suffering.

Bill’s interest in child psychology led him to explore various aspects of teaching about children’s mental health. In teaching he will always be remembered as a pioneer in developing strategies to address trauma in children, recognising the importance of early intervention for long-term psychological well-being. Bill taught international cohorts of students at King’s College London, helping them set child mental health priorities in their home countries (Bruha et al., 2018).

The impact of Bill’s work in Ukraine extended beyond the immediate implementation of TRT. It fostered collaboration between international and local professionals, creating a platform for ongoing research and the development of culturally sensitive interventions. His work contributed to the development of community mental health care in Ukraine (Wong et al., 2022), based on British innovative models (Ougrin et al., 2014).

Bill’s legacy in Ukraine includes not only the tangible effects of TRT but also the seeds of continued growth in the field of child psychology in collaboration with other disciplines. This includes the development of a therapeutic book, Rucksack, written in collaboration with writers and illustrators, Di Redmond, Lilia Martynyuk, Anna and Mariya Shevchenko. The book is aimed at helping child refugees from Ukraine and guiding them through emotional regulation skills in a fun and interactive manner. It is also supplemented with a short booklet with easy exercises to try. Its uptake and use have been a huge success with families in the UK and globally (see Rucksack Project below*). Interventions of this kind are an important part of delivering healthcare to Ukrainian refugees in general (Poppleton et al., 2022, Solerdelcoll et al., 2023) and children in particular (Lukito et al., 2023).

The passing of Bill Yule will be marked with deep sorrow in Ukraine. His contributions will endure through the lives he touched and the knowledge he shared. His work in Ukraine serves as a testament to the transformative power of psychological interventions in the face of adversity.

Bill Yule’s impact on child psychology, particularly through his involvement in bringing Teaching Recovery Techniques to Ukraine in 2014, showcases the profound influence one individual can have on the well-being of children in challenging circumstances. His legacy lives on in the continued efforts to understand and address the psychological needs of young individuals around the world. If you have a psychologist like this, who needs a psychiatrist, as Bill would have put it.

Dennis Ougrin

Professor, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK

and

Youth Resilience Unit, Centre for Psychiatry and Mental Health, Wolfson Institute of Population Health, WHO Collaborating Centre for Mental Health Services Development

Anna Tarasenko

Ukrainian Medical Association of the United Kingdom

Kateryna Yavna

Children and War UK

A tribute

Bill, with Patrick Smith, supervised my PhD studies from 2000 to 2003. Bill was a wonderful supervisor. He allowed me to pursue my ideas and interests but always kept me grounded in terms of what was feasible and what would help children affected by trauma. I believe this was true for many of us who worked with Bill – he helped build generations of research clinical psychologists but encouraged them to grow without interference. In this and subsequent projects we worked on, he offered his wisdom and experience while all the time allowing his colleagues to take initiative and build their confidence. Of course, Bill cheerfully provided countless anecdotes about the greats he had worked with or supervised; but there was never a hint of a past golden age behind us. Instead, there was an exciting present and hope-filled future that those of us new to research might contribute to and take forwards. Long after he supervised our respective doctorates, Bill was a vital collaborator and mentor to Patrick and me. His sincere encouragement meant so much and has kept many of us going, despite the frustrations of research bureaucracy, grant failures and the peer-review process.

Bill’s contribution to our understanding of PTSD in children and adolescents was extraordinary. No less extraordinary was his astonishing retirement, which he used to advance the work of the Children and War Foundation UK. Bill’s enthusiasm for training others was relentless. Bill always found a way of putting others at ease and getting collaborations going. His last Children and War Foundation UK meeting in the summer of 2023 was spent, as ever, fostering working partnerships for the future.

Underpinning much of his success as a communicator was his mischievous sense of humour. Bill delighted in getting one up on those he saw as being stuck in their ways or prejudices, and his glee would be expressed with a wonderful glint in the eye. Bill wasn’t afraid of gently poking fun at his colleagues, but you always knew it was meant with affection and because you were on the same side; he could take it as well as give it out.

Bill’s skill as an orator came from a providing a powerful narrative, building on an important history but enlivening his listeners to confront fresh challenges. It was the greatest privilege to have worked with such an important psychologist and such a great man. May we all have as a great a sense of humour, such a flair for storytelling, and as much commitment to our students and clients, as Bill did.

Richard Meiser-Stedman

Professor of Clinical Psychology, Norwich Medical School, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK

Personal memories

My strongest personal memories of Bill derive from the middle to late 1970s until the 1990s. During this time Bill was Head of the Clinical Psychology department at the Bethlem/Maudsley Special Health Authority and first started work with survivors of trauma. I remember staff meetings in which Bill continually reported on hospital business. It was clear that he carried the main burden of the work of representing and promoting psychology in the hospital, which he did with a dogged determination and with considerable effect. In fact I would argue that the recent inclusion of Psychology in the Institute’s title is attributable to Bill’s early work in establishing his subject within the institution. He oversaw a major increase in staff numbers and fought a long battle to retain the integrity of the Institute department and oppose the establishment of a separate hospital department. To this end he succeeded in moving clinical psychologists from the Academic Lecturer scale in the university to the Clinical Lecturer scale, thus greatly increasing the upper range of payment open to staff and allowing the recruitment of senior staff to vacancies.

I think Bill’s prodigious work at the Institute stemmed from his commitment to the scientist/practitioner model which the Institute department had established and was known for. For Bill, research and practice were indivisible. His academic standards were formidable and his opposition to psychological approaches not based in research was unrelenting. I remember him once fiercely taking me to task during a coffee table conversation, for using the Beck Depression Inventory as a clinical tool. He also argued strongly against introducing an interview as part of the Department’s selection procedure for trainees, also on evidential grounds.

I observed Bill’s scientist/practitioner approach in action as we began seeing survivors of the Herald of Free Enterprise ferry capsize in 1977. Bill’s instinct was to use standardised measures in carrying out the assessments requested by lawyers acting in compensation claims. These data would contribute to research in PTSD, then in its infancy.

But Bill was by no means a cold or distant researcher. He understood the emotional impact of work with survivors and tried to make himself available to offer support after sometimes gruelling interviews. It was also notable that Bill showed interest in and sympathised with colleagues. For example, he was often known to have visited staff in hospital.

My strongest overall impression of Bill through working closely with him was of his huge commitment to psychology and his prodigious capacity for hard work. Not only did he carry a considerable administrative burden, but he also continued his clinical practice with children, with associated teaching and supervisory roles. This was in addition to his academic work as researcher, author, supervisor, examiner, reviewer and editor, in all of which he was energetically active. In many ways, he provided an exemplary model of the academic practitioner. One that few live up to.

Ruth M. Williams

Formerly, Senior Lecturer in Clinical Psychology, Department of Psychology, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Neuroscience King’s College London London, UK

and

Hon Consultant Clinical Psychologist, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust London, UK

A personal recollection

In 1994, I was coming to the end of a post-doc position in Florida. Bill advertised a post on an internet trauma bulletin board. He was looking for someone to go to Bosnia Herzegovina to help in the dissemination of a screen-and-treat program for war-affected children. Patrick Smith was already working there in Mostar. Bill hired me and by December of 1995, I was working with Bill at the Institute of Psychiatry and Michael Rutter Centre on nearly a day-to-day basis until his retirement in 2005. Half of my clinical time was spent in his Child Traumatic Stress Clinic or going to Bosnia or somewhere else for Bill, on behalf of UNICEF or the Children and War Foundation he had established with Atle Dyregrov (Bergen, Norway).

I have such vivid recollections of sitting in Bill’s office at the IoPPN, usually with Patrick Smith, and Bill with pen and pad in hand. His desk was always a mess of papers, the shelves on his wall bowing under the weight of books (many of his own), doctoral theses, and journals. There was ‘the’ filing cabinet, the small mementos from some far-flung trip, honours, certificates slightly akimbo on the wall or shelf, and I think a cartoon drawing of himself that he had done on some adventure with Atle.

Down to business … Bill talking about the clinic, chapters almost ready/chapters long delayed, updates and translations of the Children’s Revised Impact of Event Scale (CRIES) and the trauma recovery treatment manual, … a quick reply to an email …, a little health disclosure, … back to business, … the next overseas training for UNICEF or the Foundation, what to submit to the next conference (he’d always try and help fund Patrick and I to attend), an update on his family, the occasional bit of gossip, his Cheshire Cat grin, the soporific voice, the slight Scottish lilt, punctuated now and again by this wonderful belly laugh. His hand gestures when he spoke or wrote on his pad … (was it a cat’s eye ring in gold?), Bill holding court at conference dinners or suddenly producing a lovely bottle of plonk or a single malt from his bag when we were on some far-flung training. Lunch and tea in the IoPPN canteen, leaning in to hear him. Everyone acknowledging Bill, happy to see him. A little Scottish rock star.

When Bill retired in 2005, I had the great privilege of succeeding him as the lead for the Child Traumatic Stress Clinic. I say ‘lead’, but it was very much a joint effort with Patrick Smith, and later with Eleanor Leigh. The financial pressures on the NHS and the clinic increased, with constant cuts (née ‘savings’) and reorganisations carving deeply into the child and adolescent mental health services all around us. It’s very much a testament to Bill that the clinic survived the cuts and reorganisations. He fought to get the clinic established, to make it viable, and to ensure that the clinic had a genuine impact in a national and international context, in terms of service delivery, training of mental health professionals, the content of clinical guidelines, broader public policy, and of course, research on childhood PTSD. The enduring presence of the clinic to so many years later, in a landscape of perennial service cuts and reorganisations, and now under the leadership of Andrea Danese, Patrick Smith, Jessica Richardson, Zoë Maiden and Sarah Miles, is very much a testament to Bill’s vision, his ability to execute on that vision, and his legacy.

I cannot adequately describe the enormous goodwill that Bill left behind for the rest us of us who worked with him to benefit from, goodwill that he continued to generate after his retirement, through his tireless devotion to the improving the quality of care for traumatised children and their families, both in the UK and abroad, and via his warmth and support. I’m just back from doing a PTSD training in Cairo, Egypt. So many people came up to tell me about how Bill had helped them and their use of his trauma recovery manual. Bill made a lasting difference and I miss him dearly.

Sean Perrin

Professor and Lead for Clinical Psychology, Department of Psychology, Lund University Sweden

Reflections

Thirty-six years ago, Bill took me on as a PhD student. I remember arriving for my interview and being greeted by Bill in the lobby of the Institute, going up in the lift to his office, the shelves heaving with his files and books. A day that changed my life. The relationship with a PhD supervisor can be an enormously influential one, it is developmental and becomes part of one’s own life story – a relationship that roots you in a time and place, that all else is traced back to. That is what it is for me. I consider myself so fortunate to have had the experience of working with Bill. As I say, it changed my life.

At the time Bill was head of clinical services at the Maudsley Hospital and had been asked by lawyers pursuing compensation claims on behalf of the survivors of the Herald of Free Enterprise ferry disaster in 1987, and the Jupiter cruise ship sinking of 1988, to conduct assessments and provide psychological help. Bill saw the opportunities in this work to make a difference. He truly cared for the survivors and young people he worked with, and he knew the value of real-world research. We were among very few at that time who were interested in trauma. The acronym PTSD was still unknown to most and unlike today, often it had to be spelled out even among our colleagues. We were early into the field, and it felt like we were pioneering new territory.

I became part of the Herald of Free Enterprise Research Team, which also included Peter Hodgkinson, Colin Murray-Parkes, and Ruth Williams. Recently, in clearing out some old files as part of a house move, I came across a copy of the conference paper Bill had delivered in 1990 on behalf of the team to the second European Society for Traumatic Stress, and later written up and distributed to us. Seeing that paper again after so many years, and with Bill’s note on the letterheaded paper of the, then named, Institute of Psychiatry, took me back to that exciting time in the late 1980s, of which I have such treasured memories.

The topic of trauma is everywhere now. Back then when we got involved, the published trauma research was still new, from America, and very diagnostically driven. But right from the start Bill brought a different view. I remember how influenced he was in his thinking by Jack Rachman’s concept of emotional processing. Making that link was a profound intellectual step. Understanding the signs and symptoms as indicative of a need to process experience is not unusual today, but I am sure few will realise that this is where it started.

As a supervisor, Bill gave me huge leeway. He encouraged my more social psychological directions. During the 1990s we published many papers and chapters together, and both he and Ruth Williams helped co-author my first book, Understanding Posttraumatic Stress. Building on Rachman’s work, one of the more prescient things we did in this book was to offer a model for formulation for posttraumatic stress, one that saw it as a natural and normal psychosocial process. When Rachman wrote a favourable review of the book in Behaviour Research and Therapy, we were delighted. I saw less of Bill after that, as we came to the end of our research and writing together. Meeting at various events over the subsequent years, it was always a joy to catch up. Bill could invigorate a room with his energy and enthusiasm, his commitment and compassion. I always turned to him as a referee, and I am thankful to him for that. I am sure without his words my own career would be very different. He was always supportive, and now with my own students I think of how Bill was for me and that I should be so with them.

When my more recent book on posttraumatic growth appeared, I sent Bill a copy, acknowledging his influence. I remember that he was so very pleased to learn that our paper together 20 years ago, on positive and negative changes in outlook in survivors had become one of the first pioneering studies in this new field. Bill was most prolific, active, and engaged in so many ways with different people and projects over many years, it is a privilege to have been part of his world. I will always be grateful to Bill for all that he gave me and the lessons I learned from him, some of it scholarly but most of all about how to be a decent person.

Stephen Joseph

Professor School of Education, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK

Children and clinical teamwork

When I arrived as a new consultant psychiatrist to our team in 1995 and he was the famous and well-established consultant clinical psychologist on the team, I was in trepidation. But he made it incredibly easy and was a joy to work with. He made all of the team feel comfortable and was easy to get on with.

He wore his considerable learning and expertise with a light touch, and could be very funny, with a great line in jokes. There were remarkable stories that arose about adopted children, as we went along, from the parents who said there was a foul smell in the room and the child had managed to deposit a poo in the middle of the room underneath the carpet, to the mother of a 6-year-old who each evening would sit her adopted son in her lap and push him out between her legs because she’s been told that he needed rebirthing in a non-traumatic way. And the parents who had been told to put pasta in their children’s shoes while they were away at school and not explain why …

He was enormously practical, for example we had a child who was in a total dilemma as to whether to send his birth mother or adoptive mother his Mother’s Day card, quick as a whip, Bill said send them both one. Problem solved, to the child’s enormous relief.

I was not a specialist in PTSD, but he showed me how not only to do exposure, sometimes using EMDR, but then would go on to help the person come to terms with what had happened, helping them accept it, but then talk to them about what they wanted in the future out of life, helping them create a new narrative.

I brought children with challenging behaviour to the team’s work, then Bill showed his incredibly deep grasp of social learning theory so that made our interventions all the stronger.

Of course he was often away in Europe and war-torn places, he didn’t just practise top-notch therapy in the clinic, he was amazing at disseminating practical therapies around the world so that thousands of people got relief and an evidence-based approach to reducing their traumatic pain.

I shall miss his warmth and kindness.

Stephen Scott CBE

Professor of Child Health and Behaviour, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London

and

Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist, Maudsley Hospital London, UK

A personal memoir

I knew Bill for almost 40 years – the whole of my working life. It seemed he would always be there, with his quiet wisdom, his wry smile and his endless encouragement.

I first met him as a PhD student at the Institute of Psychiatry in the late 1980s. I was volunteering to help with assessing survivors of the Herald of Free Enterprise ferry sinking who were attending the department for PTSD assessments. I knocked on his door and entered a scene that was unchanging for decades. Bill in his expansive office chair surrounded by piles of books, papers and files – like Captain Kirk on the bridge of the Enterprise. It seemed like a dangerously chaotic arrangement but when, as he often did, Bill mentioned a paper or a book that he thought might be of interest he could always put his hands on it immediately and unerringly.

I last saw Bill in Oxford, at a Festschrift celebration for David Clark. I guess he was probably older and a touch more frail, but to me he looked and seemed the same as he always had. We worked together all of that time, publishing almost 50 papers together, but it is the things he taught me or tried to teach me that transcend all of the science that stick with me the most.

Bill was a big advocate of keeping things simple. He was, I believe, a behaviourist at heart. Even ‘cognition’, although acknowledged, was viewed with healthy scepticism as perhaps an unnecessary complication when understanding mental health. This parsimony allowed him to quickly get to the heart of an issue or a problem, whether it be a scientific question, or a clinical formulation.

Bill always, too, kept his eye on the prize. The holy grail of helping children and young people who were struggling in life. He would indulgently collaborate with fancy experiments, and complex analyses, but he would always gently steer the questions and the justifications back to applied issues.

Bill was also an amazing clinical-academic citizen – he set up a plethora of groups, societies, and charities; he served on countless committees, editorial boards, trial steering groups, and exam boards; he selflessly supported students and early career researchers, deriving as much pleasure in watching them thrive as he did from his own work.

Bill was profoundly loved, appreciated and admired. He touched so many lives – the hundreds, probably thousands, of children he helped, the countless colleagues he inspired and supported, and his many, many friends. I miss him.

Tim Dalgleish

Programme Lead Cognition, Emotion and Mental Health Programme, Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit

and

Director Cambridge Research Centre in Affective Disorders University of Cambridge Cambridge UK