Will Heaven

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

Most inmates are mentally ill, but Chris Atkins is particularly haunted by the teenager, imprisoned for stealing sweets, who recently hanged himself in Wandsworth

issue 22 February 2020
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  • A Bit of a Stretch: The Diaries of a Prisoner

    Chris Atkins

    Atlantic Books, pp. 327, £16

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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