This is a story of the visits I made over the years to men in one particular prison. When I started, I had no idea of what the inside of a prison would be like and even less what kind of men I would be meeting. Some had short sentences, some long and one or two had no prospect of release. Mostly, they just wanted to talk, ordinary day-to-day conversation, with someone from the outside. It was a bit like chatting to an acquaintance you would bump into in your local High Street. Sometimes we sat opposite each other in a noisy, crowded Visits Hall. I have no idea what if anything the men gained from the visits. For myself, I learned a lot, so I wouldn’t have missed these visits. I was sorry when they came to an end.
Christine Brown has worked on local and national newspapers and has written Goodbye Patrick, the story of her five adopted children. She read English at St Hilda’s College, Oxford, and gained her PhD on the Catholic Novel at Reading University in 2004. She was born in Edinburgh and now lives in Buckinghamshire.