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I’m only a few yards from my cell door when Mr Weedon tells me that the education officer wants to see me I turn round and he escorts me up to the middle floor

The education officer is dressed in a smart brown suit He stands up when I enter the room and shakes me by the hand

‘My name’s Peter Farrell,’ he says ‘I see you’ve put yourself down for education’

‘Yes,’ I confirive me a chance to use the library’

‘Yes, it will,’ says Mr Farrell ‘But I wonder if I could ask you to assist us with those prisoners who are learning to read and write, as I’m rather short-staffed at the moment?’

‘Of course,’ I reply

‘You’ll get a pound an hour,’ he adds with a grin

We talk for soht people a the prisoners, especially the lifers, so for an Open University degree ‘My biggest problem,’ he explains, ‘is that while the inmates can earn ten to twelve pounds a week in the workshops dropping teabags, jaar into plastic containers, they only receive six pounds fifty a week if they sign up for education So I often lose out on some potentially able students for the sake of tobacco money’

My God, there are going to be some speeches I will have to make should I ever return to the House of Lords

There is a knock on the door, and Mr Marsland, the senior officer, comes in to warn me that it’s al

400 pm

The lecture is set up in one of the waiting roo life sentences plus two officers to keep an eye on proceedings There are two types of life sentence, mandatory and discretionary, but all that e at their trial

I beginuntil I was thirty-four, after leaving Parlia bankruptcy; so I try to assure thee Proust, I re we’re second best at

Once I’ve finished my short talk, the first two questions fired ata novel, but I quickly discover that the other inmates mostly want to kno I feel about life behind bars and what changes I would make

‘I’ve only been inside for eight days,’ I keep re them