Reading
A book can be a door out of a cell. These are the books that opened mine, and the lists I make for other people.
How to use these lists
Every book here has a line about why it is on the list. Some are easy going and some are hard work, and that is fine. Listening counts too: on Basic in prison, with no television, I fell asleep to audiobooks from the library. Your local library can get almost any of these for free, and most libraries also lend ebooks and audiobooks through their apps.
The books that changed my life
1975
The Eagle Has Landed
Jack Higgins
I found it on a cupboard shelf in my cell at Feltham when I was fifteen. German paratroopers, a quiet Norfolk village and a plan to kidnap Churchill. I understood about a quarter of it, and it showed me why people read: it got me out of that cell while I was still sitting in it.
1946
Man's Search for Meaning
Viktor Frankl
A psychiatrist who survived the Nazi camps writes that the one freedom nobody can take from you is how you choose to respond. I read it in 2007 and walked straight back into the same life. I read it again years later, in cell 30 at HMP Highpoint, and this time it changed me.
The prison list
I was asked to put together a reading list for some prison libraries , for men who might be sitting exactly where I once sat. I chose books that I hope will help them think critically, understand the world around them and work out how they fit into it. Both of my books are on it. Here is the rest.
Kes
Barry Hines
A boy in a Yorkshire mining town, written off at school and at home, finds something he is brilliant at when he trains a kestrel.
Prisoners of Geography
Tim Marshall
How mountains, rivers and seas shape what countries do, told through ten maps.
Sapiens
Yuval Noah Harari
A short history of humankind, from the first humans to today.
Just Mercy
Bryan Stevenson
A lawyer's fight for people on death row in America, many of them wrongly convicted or never properly defended.
Natives
Akala
Race and class in Britain, told through the writer's own life growing up in London.
The Kite Runner
Khaled Hosseini
A friendship in Kabul, a betrayal, and a man who goes back years later to put things right.
Nineteen Eighty-Four
George Orwell
A man living in a state that watches everything and decides what is true.
Meditations
Marcus Aurelius
The private notes of a Roman emperor on how to live well and stay in charge of your own mind.
A book that found me inside
Stuart: A Life Backwards
Alexander Masters
We read it in the reading group at HMP Highpoint, and then the author came into the prison to talk to us. It tells the story of a homeless man who had been in and out of prison backwards, to find out what happened to the little boy he once was. The men in that room could relate to Stuart.
More lists coming
More lists are on their way, including books for people who think reading is not for them, and books for anyone who works with people like the boy I was. If you have a suggestion, I would love to hear it.
Suggest a book