Audrey was an artist who lived with severe mental illness and spent her life in and out of psychiatric hospitals. Audrey documented her life in hundreds of sketchbooks, scrapbooks and diaries recording what she ate, who she wrote to, and what she did everyday over a period of decades.

Amiss died in 2013 at the age of 79, having lived in semi-reclusive lifestyle in her later years. When her family cleared the home, they discovered hundreds of her sketchbooks, scrapbooks, photograph albums, account books, record books and log books, spanning from Amiss's early life up until the day of her death on 10 July 2013. The sketchbooks alone contain an estimated 50,000 individual sketches, with Amiss often filling entire volumes in one sitting or over the course of a single day.

In 2014, Amiss' family donated the collection in its entirety to Wellcome Collection, a library and museum in London which focuses on human health and medicine.

TYPIST, ARTIST, PIRATE KING is a film of an imaginary road trip embarked on by Audrey and her mental health worker, written and directed by Carol Morley it stars Monica Dolan as Amiss, as well as Kelly Macdonald, and Gina McKee.

Running time 1 hour 46 minutes.

Archiving Audrey Amiss

Conserving Audrey Amiss

Photographing Audrey Amiss