Sister Patricia Mary England was born in Shrewsbury in 1919 and studied at Notre Dame High School in Norwich. She entered the Dominican Sisters in 1937. For the next 30 years she was known as Sister Mary Gilbert, before reverting to her own name.

She began her studies at Queen Mary College in 1945, immediately after the Second World War. Her superiors at the convent arranged for her to attend the College, where she read English Language and Literature and specialised in Nineteenth-Century and Modern literatures. Sister Patricia earned upper second honours and graduated in 1948.

She remembers fondly her Anglo Saxon tutor, Dr Gwendolyn Ingram, and Professor James Sutherland, who was excellent on Shakespeare. At the time, classes included 30-40 students in the first year, and fewer in second and third years. Most classes were lecture-based, and the rooms where lectures took place were also used as library space. This was because the Octagon, which had been the library, was bombed in the Blitz. The Octagon library was restored during Sister Patricia's time at the College, and she recalls HM Queen Mary coming to the College to re-open the library after repairs were completed.

Sister Patricia recalls that there were several sisters from different orders attending the College at the time, including eight within the English Department. Travel to College for her and her companion, Sister M. Joan Isaac, involved a long journey from the convent in Portobello Road in West London to Stepney Green station, and then a walk up the Mile End Road to the campus.

The combination of being a religious sister and a student was sometimes challenging, and there were inevitable restrictions on the sisters' social lives since they were required to return to the convent after lectures and assignments had to be completed in the evenings after duties within the convent were done.

Sister Patricia went on to become a teacher mainly of English and Religious Education at St Dominic’s Priory School in Stone, Staffordshire, St Dominic's Grammar School Stoke-on-Trent and served as a headmistress at the order's schools in Stroud and Brewood. She was committed to work in education for over 30 years before moving on to new ministries in Essex and Ealing. She now lives at St Dominic's Convent, Stone.