The latest issue of the London Review of Books has this wonderful letter in it:
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
I just hope Brian Harrison replies in another sixteen years’ time to say that it’s Priestley who’s wrong.
