Paula Laycock (formerly Halson) came to the College in 1988 to take up the role of secretary to the College’s third Master, Sir Hermann Bondi. She then held the position of Registrar from 1991 to 2014, before taking on the part-time role of College Records Officer in the Churchill Archives Centre. She co-ordinates the College’s oral history project, where she has carried out nearly one hundred oral history recordings to date, and also produces the Fellowship Newsletter.

Paula graduated from the Open University with an Honours Degree in French and English in 2001. The same year she became the first member of staff to be awarded a Churchill Fellowship by the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust, and spent eight weeks in Australia visiting universities as well as carrying out personal research on the French navigator Lapérouse. She was appointed a Staff By-Fellow in 2006 and in 2008 was awarded a Fellowship of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA).

Paula’s memoir of Sir Hermann Bondi, Flying Roast Ducks, was published by the College in 2012. Since then she has produced two further books in collaboration with John Moore, Head of Grounds and Gardens: a Garden Guide (2019), and Portrait of a Landscape (2022), with John Moore as Horticultural Adviser, which chronicles the development of the grounds and gardens of the College since 1959. Her latest book is a biography of Sheila Haywood, a forgotten but important landscape architect of the mid-twentieth century, who drew up the landscape master plan for Churchill College in 1959. Her book, Sheila Haywood: Pioneering Landscape Architect, was published by Oxbow Books/Windgather Press in October 2026 – see Sheila Haywood – Oxbow Books.  Meanwhile, Paula continues to raise Haywood’s profile through events that have already involved MERL and the Landscape Institute in Reading, local garden societies and the Gardens Trust.

Flying Roast Ducks: Recollections of Sir Hermann Bondi 1983-2005 – Churchill College Shop

Churchill College Garden Guide – Churchill College Shop

Portrait of a Landscape – Churchill College Shop