Edward Smyth – författare

Jonathan Aitken and Edward Smyth both experienced a dramatic fall from grace.Each of them found themselves removed from their homes and loved ones, locked up in prison and having to deal with the fallout of their actions. However, in the middle of their lowest point they discovered something life-changing. God hadn’t forgotten about them.Doing Time offers encouragement and advice on how to survive and even make the most of life inside prison. Offering the sort of practical and spiritual wisdom that only comes from personal experience, it shows that it is never too late for God to help us find a new way forward in our lives.

Letters for the Ages Behind Bars is a history of imprisonment told through the letters of people incarcerated over many centuries, for crimes committed or sometimes even for no reason at all. It is a story that runs from St Paul right up to the present day.The act of depriving someone of their liberty is one of humankind’s most enduring responses to ‘crime’ through history. What society has sought to achieve over the years by doing so has shifted across the centuries and there is now a variety of purposes: to express disapproval; for the purpose of straight-up punishment through the removal of freedom; to protect the general public; to rehabilitate, perhaps even to forget about those with whom we simply cannot cope. The letters assembled here come from all parts of the world, and from time immemorial: Thomas Cromwell, Mary Queen of Scots, Eamon De Valera, Al Capone, Martin Luther King and many more.These letters not only reveal what it is like to be behind bars, but raise issues that are still of pressing interest for us today - such as the death penalty, miscarriages of justice, redemption and social change. They shed light on a system which is primarily one of contradictions – there are letters which inspire, horrify, letters which awe and condemn – even letters which make you laugh or cry.

A collection of letters written through the ages from musicians of all genres, from Mozart to Elton John.For tens of thousands of years, across various civilisations, our species has been creating music. But what is behind the human fascination with music? This new volume in the Letters for the Ages series explores that question through the personal correspondence of history’s most brilliant musical talent, ranging from Hildegaard of Bingen to Amy Winehouse.Spanning from the 12th to the 21st centuries, the letters assembled in this collection combine to delve into musicians’ personal relationship with music and the creative process behind their greatest works of art. Witness your musical idols, warm-hearted and compassionate, arrogant and angry, insecure and egocentric, defeated and morose.The letters give a rare insight into the innermost thoughts of these great musicians who have created some of the most recognisable and beautiful music ever heard. But despite the mass of talent within these pages, these letters also provide the realisation that even the most extraordinary music has been created by normal people with everyday worries and preoccupations.