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Through it all, David retains his wry humour and offers a much-needed assessment of the state of UK prisons today, the job crisis and poor recruitment, the corruption and gangs running rife, and the mental health epidemic hitting prisoners, causing many to take their own lives.

Guiding us in episodic fashion through the various wings of Parkhurst prison, we witness the horrifying, disgusting and often hilarious life of a prison officer through David’s own eyes.

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After 28 years working as a prison officer, with 22 years at HMP Parkhurst, once one of Britain’s most high security prisons, David Berridge has had to deal with it all: serial killers and gangsters, terrorists and sex offenders, psychopaths and addicts. Inside Parkhurst is his raw, uncompromising look at what really goes on behind the massive walls and menacing gates.

Thrown in at the deep end, David quickly had to work out how to deal with the most cunning and volatile of prisoners, and learn how to avoid their many scams. He has been assaulted and abused; he has tackled cell fires and attempted suicides, riots and dirty protests; he has helped to foil escaped plans, talked inmates down from rooftop protests, witnessed prisoners setting fire to themselves, and prevented prisoners from attempting to murder other prisoners. And now he takes us inside this secret world for the first time.

With this searingly honest account he guides us around the wings, the segregation unit, the hospital and the exercise yard, and gives vivid portraits of the drug taking, the hooch making, the constant and irrepressible violence, and the extraordinary lengths our prison officers go to everyday. Divided into three parts – the first from David’s early years on the wings, the second the middle of his career, and the third his disillusioned later years – David will take readers into the heart of life inside and shine a light on the escalating violence and the impact the government cuts are having on the wings.

Both horrifying and hilarious, David’s diaries are guaranteed to shock and entertain in equal measure.

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Former Detective Chief Inspector Clive Driscoll made his reputation solving the unsolvable. Most famous for finally securing the convictions for the murderers of Stephen Lawrence in 2012, Clive’s prodigious rise through the ranks of the world’s most famous police force, the Met, saw him head up some of the most high-profile units at Scotland Yard.

Clive has dedicated his 35-year career to unearthing the truth. This is his brutally honest story.

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The post The Best Medicine: The true story of a nurse who became a doctor in the 1950s appeared first on Robert Smith Literary agency.

A mother’s story behind one of the most dramatic true crime cases in recent history.

“I have lived every parent’s worst nightmare. On what would have been my daughter’s 29th birthday, Detective Superintendent Stephen Fulcher knocked on the door and told me my beautiful Becky was dead. She had been found buried in a shallow grave in a remote field in the Gloucestershire countryside. Becky had been brutally murdered.”

This is Karen’s story of an unbreakable love for her daughter despite unimaginable tragedy: from her despair through Becky’s troubled teenage years, to the agonising eight years when Becky was missing, and then the dramatic story of how a killer’s confession led to a terrible discovery.

Karen was thrown into a world where the truth was never guaranteed; where taxi driver Christopher Halliwell nearly got away with murder; where the police officer who found her daughter was punished instead. The one constant has been Karen’s determination to fight for Becky, tirelessly campaigning for the truth about what happened and Halliwell to face the consequences of his evil actions.

*The murders of Becky Godden-Edwards and Sian O’Callaghan will soon be the focus of major new ITV series A Confession starring Martin Freeman as Stephen Fulcher and Imelda Staunton as Karen Edwards.

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How much do we really know about our parents’ lives? What secrets lie in plain sight? This is the true story of hidden love within a small circle of some of the most acclaimed anthropologists of the 20th century.

Told by Rosemary and Raymond Firth’s son, and the daughter of Celia and Edmund Leach, the man Rosemary loved all her life, this part love-story, part biography, part social history is the story of a highly influential circle of social anthropologists in Britain from the 1930s, through the Second World War, to the end of the century.

The book explores their early influences, their insecurities, their flaws, struggles and achievements. It is a story of passion and commitment, but also of deceit and betrayal, including the inexplicable disappearance, death and alleged murder of a very close friend. It also narrates Rosemary’s struggles for emotional and intellectual independence in the face of societal expectations of women and her own guilt, loss and self-doubt.

The post Love, Loyalty and Deceit: Rosemary Firth, a Life in the Shadow of Two Eminent Men appeared first on Robert Smith Literary agency.