Introduction

At the end of March, it was looking increasingly like there would be a lockdown at HMP Manchester, and at the time we were expecting this to last a few weeks. I decided to organize a competition for the men which might keep them occupied for some of this time. I contacted Jonathan Aitkin and explained that I was going to ask them to write a letter to their 13-year-old selves. Jonathan Aitken is a former Cabinet Minister who was given an 18-month prison sentence in 1999 for perjury. Now a reverend and in his eighties, Jonathan currently works as a chaplain in Pentonville jail. He kindly agreed to judge and offered me a cash prize of £50 for the winner, from his prison charity. I organized a leaflet to explain, which I was hoping would be distributed around the wings.

Three weeks turned into three months, and then it became apparent that the Education Department would be closed indefinitely. I had to change the competition into something more in-depth and long term. I thought that writing might help provide ‘medicine for the mind’ during the lockdown. I produced a creative writing pack and contacted another three published authors, two with Manchester connections, David Nolan and Joseph Knox, and also Erwin James, an author who had served a life sentence and is currently editing Inside Time, the prisoners’ newspaper.

All three writers, without hesitation, offered to be judges. I asked the men to write about their experiences of life in the prison during the pandemic, or about something that was very important to them or, in fact, anything they wanted to write about.

The work they produced was extremely varied. I did receive some letters from men who wrote to their younger selves, the original competition idea, and these were brutally honest and poignant. Some are featured in a booklet. One piece came in on the back of an envelope, and the writer explained he had never written ‘a story’ before. Others wrote about their heroes. There were many moving autobiographical accounts, book reviews and a great deal of poetry. Several wrote very accurate descriptions of their experiences during the early pandemic. Some of the material made me laugh out loud, but more of it I found to be extremely moving and revealing.