THE VERDICT OF YOU ALL.

... Rupert Croft-Cooke Secker & Warburg, Ltd., London "It began with a knocking on the front door at two o'clock on a Sunday morning."

Rupert Croft-Cooke, prominent British novelist, a man with a fine war record, had settled in the Sussex village of Ticehurst, and restored a small Georgian house, where he lived with an Indian servant-secretary. He entertained quietly but frequently guests ranging from local gypsies to members of Parliament and famed writers and artists. Some people had been mildly shocked by his latest book, THE LIFE FOR ME, a praise of cultured bachelorhood.

On that Sunday morning in 1953, his peaceful life exploded. He was arrested by local police on a charge of having allegedly committed "gross acts" with two sailors who had been among his guests the previous weekend. The matter seemed fantastic and at first he took it lightly. The townsfolk and his friends stood by him. One of the sailors reported to his superiors that the police, having arrested them on another charge, had promised to drop that charge if the sailors would bring charges against Croft-Cooke. Yet the matter was sufficiently upsetting that he made arrangements to sell his house and go abroad after the trial. He did not realize the connection between his case and the affairs of Montagu and Gielgud, already flaring across the headlines. He was caught up in an anti-homosexual campaign sweeping England. (See article. in May, '54 ONE) After a quick trial, though he had prominent character witnesses, and despite the obviously perjured testimony of the sailors, he was off immediately to a nine month sentence at a prison engagingly named Wormwood Scrubbs.

Nothing else was engaging about the place, though it was far from the sort of place or experience described by Oscar Wilde under similar circumstances. This, however, resulted more from Croft-Cooke's attitude than from the slightly improved prison conditions. He decided he must use the experience rather than letting it break him. Therefore, this book is no self-pitying account of one man's miseries. He took it as the best sort of thing that could happen to a writer a damned nuisance, perhaps. For the reader, the result is a refreshingly enjoyable book that also manages to be an effectively damning indictment of the British prison system. With detachment and wit that may seem almost unbelievable to some American readers, he counts his days, describes the petty stupidities of the authorities and gives a human account of both the warders and his fellow prisoners screwsmen, sexual offenders, embezzelers, petty

thieves, blackmailers, etc.

Especially memorable was the pathetic account of an aging clergyman on a morals charge involving choir boys, and also his strong portraits of the thieves he called Bill, Joe and Mike, and his description of the equalizing bonds that unite men as prisoners.

The one incident that took the edge off his temper was his discovery on leaving prison that he would not be permitted to take with him the manuscript of a novel he'd been working on, though pious regulations granted this general privilege, so long as the manuscript did not deal with prison life. (His solicitors later got the manuscript for him.) An amusing incident occurred when he had occasion to mention to a prison official that he intended to write fully about his experiences after his release. He was promptly bundled off to Brixton, a filthy hole for short-stay prisoners. He was as quickly shipped back to the Scrubbs when he told Brixton authorities the same thing.

one

20