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Lead book review

Shades of the prison house: the ghosts of suicides fill our prisons

As an inmate, Chris Atkins discovered just how violent and chaotic prison life is. His diaries highlight a national scandal – and the dangerous incompetence of the Ministry of Justice, says Will Heaven

21 February 2020

10:00 PM

21 February 2020

10:00 PM

A Bit of a Stretch: The Diaries of a Prisoner Chris Atkins

Atlantic Books, pp.327, £16.99

About the time Chris Atkins’s cell was slammed shut at Wandsworth Prison for the first time, I was sitting on the tenth floor of the Ministry of Justice, glued to BBC News. My boss, Michael Gove, had just been given the boot by Theresa May, and as his speechwriter I would be inherited by whoever replaced him as justice secretary.

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