Reviewed April 2021
“Welcome to her Majesty’s Prison Service. Like most people, documentary writer Chris Atkins didn’t spend much time thinking about prisons. But after becoming embroiled in a dodgy scheme to fund his latest film, he was sent down for five years. His new home would be HMP Wandsworth, one of the largest and most dysfunctional prisons in Europe…”
(c352 pages) (2020) (Paperback) (Kindle) (Audiobook)
Are you interested in reading other books that tell of life in prison?
‘Conversations With Myself gives readers insight to the darkest hours of Nelson Mandela’s twenty-seven years of imprisonment and his troubled dreams in his cell on Robben Island.”
Click here to visit Amazon and find out more…
Or Inspired by prison…
See the Guardian Newspapers suggestions to the best books to read inspired by prison…Click here to read the article in full
Le Morte d’Arthur, by Sir Thomas Malory
“Imprisoned during the 1450s, perhaps for rape as well as theft, Malory filled the years he spent waiting for trial recalling the tales of chivalry that he then collected as one of Caxton’s first bestsellers.”
Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes
“Cervantes was jailed two or three times, and he claims in his prologue to Don Quixote that his great mock-romance was “begotten in a prison”.
Pilgrim’s Progress, by John Bunyan
“Bunyan’s allegory, narrating Christian’s journey to the holy city, was written while he was incarcerated in Bedford jail for 12 years. He was imprisoned for refusing to cease public preaching.”
De Profundis, by Oscar Wilde
“In Reading jail, where he spent two years after being found guilty of “gross indecency”, Wilde penned his apologia for his life and conduct.”
Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, by John Cleland
“While confined for a year in the Fleet debtors’ prison in the 1740s, Cleland composed this peculiarly literary work of pornography, which is full of sex but has no rude words.”
Our Lady of the Flowers, by Jean Genet
“Genet’s first, largely autobiographical, novel was written in secret while its author was in prison for theft.”
“To Althea, from Prison”, by Richard Lovelace
“The Cavalier poet jailed in the Fleet prison produced probably the most famous prison-lines in English poetry”
Pisan Cantos, by Ezra Pound
“Written while the poet – was interned in a camp near Pisa, he produced the most admired and accessible section of his magnum opus.”
Justine , by the Marquis de Sade
“The infamous libertine spent much of his adult life in prison and wrote most of his novels there.”
A Hymn to the Pillory , by Daniel Defoe
‘This satire was written in Newgate prison while waiting to be put in the pillory.”
Available in paperback, hardback or digitally for devices such as a Kindle or the Kindle App on the Apple App Store or Google Play.
Pig By The Coast 