Event type:	Saturday Talk
Date:	11th January 2025
Time:	10:30 am - 11:30 am
Venue:	Central Methodist Church Hall
Cost:	Admission is £3, payable in cash on the door, and tea/coffee is £1.

Alan Smith read philosophy at the University of York and for many years was a schoolteacher. When his first novel was published he got a job at the University of Northampton teaching Creative Writing. Then he was offered another job in a prison, just for a couple of weeks, teaching literature and philosophy. He stayed for fourteen years, splitting his time between prison and university - sometimes the students in prison were better read and motivated than the undergraduates. He has written several novels, an occasional Guardian column and a prison memoir, and has given university lectures about prison education both here and in the USA.

He will be speaking about his experience of teaching philosophy to men in prison. Going into prison was, at first, a shock, then prison and prisoners quickly became something to learn about. The groups he taught were the most mixed ability groups imaginable and sometimes philosophy went of in strange directions. It was a popular class with men serving long sentences, attracted to the atmosphere of quietness and stability in the Education Department. It was perhaps a way of escaping from prison without the difficulties that leaving the premises would have caused.