Frances Donaldson
THE two books which interested me most are The Time of My Life by Denis Healey (Michael' Joseph, £17.95) and Inside Out by Rosie Johnston (Michael Joseph, £12.95). The first is a major book by a highly cultured and widely experienced man, devoted largely to his periods as international secretary to the Labour Par- ty, Defence Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer, but with a particularly good account of his last ten years in Opposition. In this age of proliferating political memoirs, it seems to me in a class of its own.
Rosie Johnston's book is an account by an upper-class and highly intelligent girl of serving six months of a sentence for drug- related offences. Keeping complete control of what might have been legitimate self- pity, she writes unemotionally about her experiences in Holloway, Bulwood Hall and East Sutton Park. Yet she has the gift of bringing people alive, and in spite of her objectivity managed often to be very mov- ing; not least in her account of mum and dad coming to visit. The book is important and should be widely read for its account of the almost always degrading, sometimes barbaric conditions which pertain in Her Majesty's prisons for women.
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