Peter Armstrong read Philosophy & English before training as a teacher and qualifying as a mental health nurse in the 1980s, then as a cognitive therapist, under Ivy Blackburn, in the early 1990s. He worked in in-patient psychiatry services, and the Newcastle CBT Centre as therapist, supervisor & teacher, finishing his NHS career as head of training there. He was an associate of the group that developed the revised cognitive therapy rating scale, CTSR,, and with Mark Freeston and colleagues helped develop the Newcastle “Cakestand” model of clinical supervision as well as models of training and interpersonal processes in CBT. He is also a poet, publishing in magazines and anthologies since 1978 with five solo collections to his name.