'lip Van Winkle

The final letter to the editor in the London Review of Books for May 10, 2012:

Latecomer

I have just seen Brian Harrison’s 1986 review of my book Victorian Lives* (LRB, 19 June 1986). He says my sources were not typical of contemporary prisoners; that I paint too bleak a picture of their experience; and do not recognise the ‘Victorian activism’ of the reformed prison. He is wrong on all three counts.

Philip Priestley
Wells, Somerset

*Whether the excision of the second word, "Prison", from the title of Mr. Priestley's book, was the work of a somnolent LRB sub-editor or of Mr. Priestly** himself is left as an exercise for the reader.

**About the Author

Philip Priestly has worked for more than thirty years in and around the English criminal justice system - campaigning for victims' right, drawing attention to inequalities in sentencing, and advocating effective alternatives to prison. He is the author or co-author of twelve books, including Community of Scapegoats (1980), Offending Behaviour (1985) and Jail Journeys (1990). He has made thirty broadcast documentaries, including a BAFTA- nominated 'Cutting Edge' on neighbours' quarrels, and a study of victim-offender mediation which won a Royal Television Society award. In 1997, for a series on archaeology, he commissioned the research which established a 9,000-year-old DNA link between the skeleton of 'Cheddar Man' and Adrian Targett, a local history teacher.--This text refers to the Paperback edition.