Told through a series of absorbing vignettes spanning from her childhood days to gaining her PhD in forensic psychology, Underclass is a memoir about extraordinary strength, the complexities of belonging, and finding your power even when it feels as though the world is against you. Do you bend to fit in, or do you accept that you will always stand out? Do you run away from your roots, or love them for making you who you are? Do you fade into mediocrity, or do you change the world?

Taylor recounts with dark humour and unflinching detail the various lives she’s lived, covering the violence suffered at the hands of her abusers, the realities of becoming a mother in her teenage years, coming to terms with her sexuality, putting herself through university, and overcoming underhand discrimination at work. She poignantly delves into both the classist and misogynistic double standards that she has faced throughout her life, whether she was waking up on a roundabout by the estate or chairing a parliamentary conference. You can take the girl out of the council estate, but you can’t take the council estate out of the girl. Especially when it made her who she is today.

The result is deeply moving, searingly honest, horribly funny and, above all, unforgettable; a memoir that stays with you long after you’ve turned the last page.

Angry, opinionated, mouthy, aggressive, hysterical, mad, disordered, crazy, psycho, delusional, borderline, hormonal . . . Women have long been pathologized, locked up and medicated for not conforming to whichever norms or stereotypes are expected of them in that time and space. Sexy But Psycho is a challenging and uncomfortable book which seeks to explore the way professionals and society at large pathologize and sexualise women and girls.

Utilising decades of research, real case studies and new data from her own work, Dr Taylor’s book will critically analyse the way we label women with personality disorders. Why are women and girls pathologized for being angry about oppression and abuse? How have so many women been duped into believing that they are mentally ill, for having normal and natural reactions to their experiences? Sexy But Psycho argues that there is a specific purpose to convincing women and girls that they are mentally ill, as the world avoids addressing violence against women and their centuries of ignored trauma.