Borstal Boy by Brendan Behan

Borstal Boy by Brendan Behan'I have him bitched, balloxed and bewildered, for there's a system and a science in taking the piss out of a screw and I'm a well trained man at it.' So writes Brendan Behan, poet, writer and literary legend, of the episode that coloured his life. Arrested in Liverpool as an agitator for the IRA, he was tried and sent to reform school. He was sixteen years old. The world he entered was brutal and coldly indifferent. Conditions were primitive, and

Luna's mum has disappeared

Fifty foot brutes who gallop far and wide every night to find human beans to eat

'Intelligent and inventive

which provided his first - and last - regular job

and instead dare to listen to and trust in the voice deep inside us

' The Irish Times

featuring a foreword from Lang Leav and 13 guest poems from leading voices in poetry such as Nikita Gill

Lady Windermere's Fan

Everyone has the potential to be happy

girls and women were incarcerated and condemned to servitude

retold in his lyrical style

but whose name was given to one of the most celebrated plays ever written