Prison is an unknown world for most of us.
It is a place where time stops and lives are held in suspension, taken out of circulation.
Amongst the gaol population are the dangerous inmates: killers and rapists, gang ‘hit-men’ and serial offenders.
They are the most notorious, their reputations sometimes enhanced by glamour, horrendous tales of their misdeeds and by their very incarceration.
Britain’s Most Notorious Prisoners tells the stories of some of their lives inside the ‘Big House’ where prison culture becomes a strange, unreal community and where the prison service has had to learn to cope with those who live by their own morality rather than the law of the land.
Here are stories about some of the most famous inmates: Ruth Ellis, the Krays, ‘prison superstar’ Charles Bronson, the Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe, the canabalistic Dennis Nilsen, the evil child-killer Ian Brady, Beverley Allitt, ‘Razor’ Smith as well as chilling accounts concerning long forgotten villains.
On the way read about Oscar Wilde’s time in Reading gaol, about spies and political prisoners and Jeremy Bamber’s long campaign to assert his innocence.
MY REVIEW
I am a massive fan of true crime books and I downloaded this one from Pen & Sword’s website when it was on offer last month and I have to say it was a gripping read and full of facts and information on a wide range of cases!
I loved the length of the chapters, they were just long enough to give a great overview in to the prisoner and the crime/s that had landed them at the pleasure of one of the many prisons in the UK. I found it was a book I could pick up and down and read a couple of chapters at a time.
I had read about the majority of the cases before but there were some new ones to me and I did find the details of the case of Oscar Wilde and his imprisonment to be really interesting, I had known he had been sent to prison and why, but I wasn’t aware of the rest of his story in terms of what had happened once he had been imprisoned – that is one of the first few entries so it really did set me up well for the rest of the book to come.
It is 5 stars from me for this one, these are definitely my kind of reads, I loved the short punchy nature of the chapters and I am really fascinated by human nature and what makes the people that commit these acts too so plenty of food for thought – very highly recommended!
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