Title: A Bit of a Stretch: The Diaries of a Prisoner
Author: Chris Atkins
Dates read: 15/06/25 – 12/01/26
Rating ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️½ (4.5 stars)
Publisher: Atlantic Books
Number of pages: 402
Fiction or non-fiction: non-fiction
Subject or genre: memoir, true crime
Book blurb:
Where can a tin of tuna buy you clean clothes? Which British education system struggles with 50% illiteracy? Where do teetotal Muslims attend AA meetings? Where is it easier to get ‘spice’ than paracetamol? Where does self-harm barely raise an eyebrow?
Welcome to Her Majesty’s Prison Service, a creaking and surreal world that has been left to rot for decades in the shadows of polite society. Like most people, documentary-maker Chris Atkins didn’t spend much time thinking about prisons. But after becoming embroiled in a dodgy scheme to fund his latest film, he was sent down for five years. His new home would be HMP Wandsworth, one of the oldest, largest, and most dysfunctional prisons in Europe.
Horrifying, moving, and darkly funny, this is the unvarnished depiction of what he found. With a cast of characters ranging from wily drug dealers to corrupt screws to senior officials bent on endless (and fruitless) reform, this is the reality behind the locked gates. Full of incredible and hilarious stories, A Bit of a Stretch reveals the true scale of our prison crisis and why it is costing us all.
How I discovered or acquired this book:I don’t actually remember – I read it on Borrowbox but don’t remember why/how I picked it up
My thoughts:A Bit of a Stretch is funny, furious, and quietly devastating in equal measure.
Written as a diary of Chris Atkins’ time in prison, the book is sharply observational and often laugh-out-loud witty, even as it documents a system that is chronically underfunded, overcrowded, and casually cruel. The humour never blunts the reality; instead, it makes the injustice land harder.
Atkins is particularly good at capturing the small, grinding absurdities of prison life – the bureaucracy, the petty rules, the boredom – and showing how they erode people over time. What makes the book so effective is its refusal to sensationalise. Violence is not the point here; degradation, neglect, and indifference are.
There’s a clear awareness of the author’s own privilege and the ways it buffers him from the worst excesses of the system, and that self-reflection adds weight rather than defensiveness. The book is angry, but it’s also humane, empathetic, and deeply concerned with how easily society accepts cruelty once it’s hidden behind walls.
The only reason this isn’t a full five stars is that the diary format can occasionally feel repetitive – though that repetition arguably mirrors the reality of incarceration itself.
A compelling, important read that manages to be entertaining without ever losing sight of the human cost of prison.