BU Research Blog

Katie Adie, in addition to being the BU Chancellor, is patron of the Footprints Charity, a key partner in Bournemouth University´s COLAB Horizon2O2O funded RISE programme. COLAB and the Footprints Project would like to draw your attention to the following event

Kate Adie in conversation with Erwin James.

Tickets can be purchased directly through the Footprints website

https://www.footprintsproject.co.uk/Event/katie-aidee-in-conversation-with-erwin-james

Caroline Stevens has offered a student discount if you contact her at caroline@footprintsproject.co.uk

Kate Adie is in conversation with former prisoner, now writer and journalist, Erwin James. This will take place at Winchester College on Friday 11th October 2019 at 6.45 pm.

Kate Adie

Kate Aide
Kate is a Footprints patron and recipient of a BAFTA Fellowship
Kate hardly needs an introduction but you may not know that she is a Patron of The Footprints Project and has been unstinting in her support of the Charity and helps us enormously. Kate is also a Deputy Lord Lieutenant of Dorset.
Kate’s books include: The Kindness of Strangers. Her autobiography Corsets to Camouflage: Women and War Nobody’s Child, which covers the history of foundling children and questions of identity. Into Danger: People Who Risk Their Lives for Work. Fighting on the Home Front: The Legacy of Women in World War One.

Erwin James

A picture of Erwin JamesErwin James Monahan was born to itinerant Scottish parents in Somerset in 1957. A family lifestyle described as, “brutal and rootless” by a prison psychologist following the death of his mother when James was seven, led to a limited formal education. Aged ten he was sleeping rough when he gained his first criminal conviction, for the burglary of a sweet shop, which resulted in him being taken into care. He left the care home at 15 and spent the rest of his teenage and early adult years drifting, living with extended family members, and again often sleeping rough. During that time he worked in various labouring jobs, but also committed relatively petty, mostly acquisitive, but occasionally violent crimes (criminal damage, common assault.) His directionless way of life, which included a period as a fugitive in the French Foreign Legion continued, until August 1984 when he began his life sentence for murder.
James went to prison an inarticulate and ill-educated individual with, in his own words, “massive failings to overcome.” With few apparent skills or abilities his prison beginnings were unpromising. After some encouragement from a prison worker however he embarked on a programme of part-time education. Six years later he graduated with the Open University, gaining an arts degree majoring in History. Around the same time he developed an interest in writing. His first article for a national newspaper, The Independent, appeared in 1994. In 1995 he won first prize in the annual Koestler Awards for prose. His first article in The Guardian newspaper appeared in 1998 and he began writing a regular column for the paper entitled A Life Inside in 2000.

A collection of his columns, A Life Inside, A Prisoner’s Notebook, was published in 2003. A follow up, The Home Stretch, From Prison to Parole, was published in 2005.

A year after his release from prison in 2004 James became a trustee of the Prison Reform Trust and from September 2009 until September 2011 he was a trustee of the Alternatives to Violence Project Britain.Erwin James now works full-time as a freelance writer.

Tickets

Tickets cost £20 each and include a welcome drink and canapes. There will be a chance to meet Erwin and to purchase a signed copy of his books.