Letters for the Ages Behind Bars -

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Résumé :

Acknowledgements
Editorial Conventions
Foreword: Jonathan Aitken

CHAPTER ONE: CONFESSION AND CONDEMNATION
'Whoever comes into the witch prison must become a witch or be tortured until he invents something out of his head'
Johannes Junius's false confession, 1628
'We justly fear that we were sadly deluded and mistaken'
Too little too late: the Salem witch trial jurors apologize, 1697
'Either kill me or accept me as I am, for may hell freeze over if I ever change'
The Marquis de Sade refuses to change, 1783
'The people, one day disillusioned, will rejoice in being delivered from a tyrant'
The Angel of Assassination, 1793
'The only thing that lies heavily on my heart is your sorrow'
The assassination of Alexander II, 1881
'I do know I shal [sic] have to answer before my Maker in Heaven for the awful crimes I have committed'
The Baby Farmer, 1896
'It's too late now to rake over ashes in the hope of finding some live coal'
Edith Thompson accepts her fate, 1922
'I felt excitement, a thrill. I was going to kill a person'
Richard Hickock admits to the Clutter murders, 1961
'We all made it that night but barely!'
The great escape: an Alcatraz escapee comes forward, 2013

CHAPTER TWO: INJUSTICE
'If I am a monster, God be merciful to me'
The trial of Rebecca Lemp, 1590
'I want to do justice to myself and to others'
Escaping slavery: Anthony Chase's harrowing story, 1827
'I do worry about customers' watches left in the empty house'
Corrie ten Boom's clock code, 1944
'One day Mummy and Daddy will return and you will no longer be orphans without a home'
Nelson Mandela comforts his daughters from afar, 1969
'He was free for a while. I guess that's more than most of us can expect'
A Soledad Brother, 1970
'It would not be right to return him to prison'
The Maguire Seven and the Guildford Four, 1980
'I did my best to fight the injustices I found in my society'
The Ogoni Nine, 1994
'I demand that we be treated like human beings, not slaves'
Nadya Tolokonnikova's hunger strike, 2013
'No one knew where I'd fallen...

Biographie:
and vice versa'
An exile in Botany Bay, 1791
'Never before have I witnessed [sic] such disgraceful proceedings'
Christmas in the workhouse, 1868
'Suicides are as common as picnics here'
Ohio Penitentiary's night druggist, 1898
'I took the drama, the most objective form known to art, and made it as personal a mode of expression as the lyric or the sonnet'
Oscar Wilde's De Profundis, 1897
'I hope to be home this year unless this blessed war never finishes or we get blown off the map'
William A. Alldritt's secret code, 1916
'I saw myself, for the first time for over three months, the other day, and it is quite amusing to meet yourself as a stranger'
Constance Markievicz keeps her spirits high, 1916
'Being prisoner of [war] does not agree with me'
John Alcock finds himself in enemy waters, 1917
'I have given up the bad habit of imagining the war may be over some day'
Bertrand Russell's pacifist protests, 1918
'Between Dev and freedom there is only this key'
?amon de Valera's festive escape, 1918
'I was in prison ... thirteen months in all'
Adolf Hitler serves time for the Munich Putsch, 1925
'I play my music, until 3 P.M., and from 3 P.M. I write songs'
Al Capone's Alcatraz band, 1938
'My love, I'm not bored, I'm very cheerful'
Jean-Paul Sartre sunbathes behind bars, 1940
'You must go on.. Be strong!'
Charles Salvador's words of support, 2017

CHAPTER FIVE: TAKING A STAND
'The blood of the poor murdered people sits heavy on their heads'
The Peterloo Massacre, 1819
'Society has used her ill and turned away from her, and she cannot be expected to take much heed of its rights or wrongs'
Charles Dickens' home for 'fallen' women, 1846
'A sight so inconceivably awful as the wickedness and levity of the immense crowd collected at that execution could be imagined by no man'
Debating public executions, 1849
'You would at long last be able to breathe the air of liberty again, for over here the air is as free as it ever can be in a capitalist society'
August Bebel becomes a socialist celebrity, 1887
'The terror of a child in prison is quite limitless'
The plight of child convicts, 1897
'I am afraid they may be saying we don't resist. Yet my shoulders are bruised with struggling whilst they hold the tube into my throat'
Sylvia Pankhurst keeps fighting, 1913
'Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere'
Martin Luther King Jr's 'Letter from Birmingham Jail', 1963
'If we're supposed to become the nails in the coffin of a tyrant, I'd like to become one of those nails. Just know that this particular one will not bend'
Oleg Sentsov makes a stand, 2016
'In my isolation I can only build a fragmented picture of what the world outside looks like'
Alaa Abd El-Fattah's absentee convention address, 2017
'When will I be able to fulfil my duties as a doctor in fighting the menace of Coronavirus?'
Coping with COVID behind bars, 2020

CHAPTER SIX: FROM THE SCAFFOLD
'I am to be executed like a criminal'
The last words of Mary, Queen of Scots, 1587
'Thy mourning cannot avail me, I am but dust'
Sir Walter Raleigh's last will and testament, 1603
'I experience the tranquillity of mind ever attending a guiltless conscience'
Marie Antoinette faces the guillotine, 1793
'The quick rattle and heavy fall of the axe'
Byron and the Master of Justice, 1817
'The head which was creating, living with the highest life of art, which had realised and grown used to the highest needs of the spirit, that head has already been cut off'
Dostoevsky avoids the firing squad, 1849
'The sentence of The Law shall be Carried out in Due Form by me as...

Sommaire:
I was entirely cut off from the outside world'
Ai Weiwei's house arrest, 2016

CHAPTER THREE: NEGOTIATION
'An old man and now also a prisoner of Christ Jesus'
Paul the Apostle urges Philemon to forgive, 57-62 CE
'Try me, good King, but let me have a Lawful Trial'
Anne Boleyn's final plea, 1536
'The frail flesh incites me continually to call to your Grace for mercy'
Thomas Cromwell's fall from grace, 1540
'He esteemed it to be of greater value than all else that he left at Gardiner's Island'
Captain Kidd's lost treasure, 1699
'Do not force me to be my own executioner'
Written in blood: a letter from the Bastille, 1761
'Your petitioner therefore prays that ... his sentence of transportation across the seas, may be carried into effect, with as little delay'
Prison in pastures new: George Hey transportation request, 1845
'It will be to your interest to come and see me'
Billy the Kid strikes a deal, 1881
'I have consequently resolved to escape'
Winston Churchill's prison break, 1899
'I was not a responsible leader, and as such do not feel myself guilty'
Adolf Eichmann refuses to accept responsibility, 1962

CHAPTER FOUR: LIFE BEHIND BARS
'Our longest day coincides exactly with your shortest...