by Lewis Cameron

Very few people know anything about what happens behind the cold stone walls of a prison, except for the prisoners and possibly their families, lawyers and chaplains.

There are few books by actual or former prisoners which enlighten us. A Bit of a Stretch, however, is one of them. It is set in HMP Wandsworth, a vast Victorian English prison.

Atkins spent the first nine months of his sentence in Wandsworth before his transfer to an open prison. He found it incredibly dirty, highly under staffed, with broken windows, inhuman living conditions, long cell lock ups and mental health problems.