John Hedge

John Hedge was brought up, very largely, in a traditional English pub (the 'bright bar'). Less traditional were the bitter rows between his loving but troubled publican parents, who sent him away for a Masonic boarding school education in the misguided belief that he would be happier away from the booze and the brickbats. Though this was meant for the best, it left him scarred by the oppressive, secretive culture of 'Ston' to the extent that in his teens he endured a catastrophicbreakdown. In looking back from his peaceful later years to life with his loving, blundering and ill-fated parents, he has given us a moving and beautifully written memoir

There were deep personal motives for John Hedge's original decision to enter the Probation Service as a young Social Science graduate in 1970; his own mother, a struggling publican, had been put on probation during his youth, and he had seen how the service can prevent a criminal conviction from ruining a life beyond repair. He spent the next 37 years working to try to give offenders a chance and help them move away from crime and find their way to a law-abiding existence. The barriers to success were all too often the attitudes of police and sentencers, the state of prisons and the prejudices of ignorant or biased politicians. This is a candid account of those years of hard work, frustration, and occasional triumph