Ruth Skrine is a retired doctor, who was born into a medical family in Chippenham, Wiltshire and was christened Ruth Lister after Lord Lister, a distant relative who was responsible for introducing antiseptic conditions for surgery.

Ruth’s career has seen her involved in general practice, family planning and psychosexual medicine. She was a founder member of the National Association of Family Planning Doctors, a precursor of The Faculty of Family Planning and Sexual Health Care at the College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.

She has edited a series of books on psychosexual medicine for Chapman and Hall and is previously published by Radcliffe Medical Press, whose books are aimed at the medical fraternity and allied professions.

In her wide and varied career, Ruth has also served a spell as the chairman of the Institute of Psychosexual Medicine as well as being a leader of various training groups.

Her late husband was a prison governor so most of her married life was spent living close to penal establishments. To sharpen her writing skills she gained an MA in creative writing from Bath Spa University in 2001.

Having spent the last few years writing fiction, she points out that although her stories are never about any particular patient, the stories of sexual unhappiness that she has listened to over the years have lingered on, firing her imagination and helping to colour her characters.

Parallel Journeys is her first novel.