Description

FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF A BIT OF A STRETCH

‘It’s a cracking book. He really can write’ James O’Brien, LBC
‘Eloquent, witty, engaging and enraged … the most important book you’ll read this year’ Sathnam Sanghera
‘Brings a unique perspective, an unflinching eye and a dark sense of humour to hidden stories from the underbelly of the British justice system’ Rafael Behr

Our justice system allows a man to escape prison by pretending to be his twin brother. It lets someone live in luxury hotels for nine months masquerading as the Duke of Marlborough. It sends a man back to prison for not attending a party.

How do these things happen, and why is it that the only thing harder than being in prison is staying out of it?

Featuring funny, wild and poignant stories, Time After Time exploits former inmate and documentary maker Chris Atkin’s unprecedented access to the criminal underworld to understand why the system actually makes reoffending all but inevitable for ex-prisoners.

Publisher Review

Eloquent, witty, engaging and enraged … the most important book you’ll read this year. — Sathnam Sanghera Chris Atkins brings a unique perspective, an unflinching eye and a dark sense of humour to hidden stories from the underbelly of the British justice system. Time after Time is entertaining, unsettling, illuminating and important. — Rafael Behr An incredible piece of work. I am trembling with rage at the state of the British penal system. Dear God – I hope this book helps change things. * John Niven * Shocking, scathing, entertaining… If you thought you knew how bad British prisons are, you haven’t read this book… It’s an inside story to make you weep at the incompetence, stupidity and viciousness of the current system. * Guardian on A Bit of a Stretch * Powerful… a dispassionate record of the grinding down of the human soul, deliberate hopelessness, insane and moribund bureaucracy, the whims of bullying guards, roll calls, curses, kicks and punches.’ * Telegraph on A Bit of a Stretch * An incredibly compelling account, not just because of Atkins’ incongruity and his knack for black, observational humour, but because it lays bare a system that has become utterly dysfunctional. Atkins is thrust into the heart of Britain’s prison crisis and can never quite believe what he is seeing. It’s a sort of Kafkaesque haplessness. A bleak catalogue of absurdity. * The Times on A Bit of a Stretch * Surreal, darkly funny, at times horrifying but always humane account of what it’s like to be locked up. * Observer on A Bit of a Stretch * A highly readable and thought-provoking account, which illuminates a failing and anachronistic institution in dire need of a radical overhaul. * Daily Mail on A Bit of a Stretch * A soul-searching account… A pacy memoir which is imbued with a dark humour… heartbreaking. [Atkins is] honest enough to have left in the parts that would make his mother wince. * Sunday Times on A Bit of a Stretch * Fabulous. Candid, funny and never self-pitying, this is a must-read insight into why prison simply doesn’t work. — Jon Snow on A Bit of a Stretch It’s a cracking book, he can really write. — James O’Brien * LBC *