Those chosen to judge the ‘Political Prisoner’ competition in London disagreed about the respective merits of the different entries. But on one point they were unanimous: that merely factual models (of prisoners looking out from behind barbed wire, for instance) are quite inadequate; and that only something symbolic is capable of re-presenting the reality of the political prisoner situation. Their insistence that it requires a symbol, not a mere photographic reproduction or sign, to re-present reality is but one example of that search for adequate symbols in which the most sensitive minds of our times are engaged. The number of those engaged in this search, and the intensity of their efforts, is easily under-estimated because the persons concerned do not fall into the customary political, religious or artistic categories; and so one fails to observe what they have in common until one becomes aware oneself of the search that is on.