It was a grey, rainy October morning when I arrived in Preston, a town where pockets of deprivation sit alongside the imposing Victorian prison at its centre.
Walking towards HMP Preston felt bleak. Its high walls seemed to rise out of the surrounding streets.
Entering the prison was overwhelming. I had been instructed to bring my passport and told mobile phones and other electronic devices were strictly prohibited. Even Lee Child couldn’t bring in his cigarettes.
At reception, officers stood behind thick protective screens. Five guards dressed in black, wearing protective vests and blue plastic gloves, gathered around an airport-style security detector, discussing their early start. Some had been on duty since 4am. It was nearly noon.
Beyond security, the daily routines of prison life continued. Orderlies wheeled large baskets of laundry across the courtyard as an assistant governor, carrying an impressive collection of keys, led me through several doors and into a windowless room.
It was an unlikely setting for a literary gathering.
Yet, here was one of the world’s most successful crime writers, arriving with the effortless cool of his fictional hero Jack Reacher, a New York accent and an easy charm.
As the UK’s inaugural Prison Reading Laureate, Lee Child is championing an ambitious scheme to distribute nearly half a million books to prisoners across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Led by The Reading Agency as part of the National Year of Reading 2026, it is believed to be the largest prison book-gifting programme ever undertaken in Britain.
The ambition? To introduce reading for pleasure to people who may never have discovered it, and perhaps change the direction of a life.
HMP Preston is a challenging environment in which to introduce a sustained reading programme. The busy men’s prison receives around 10,500 prisoners a year, with an average stay of just five days. Preston operates with a constant movement of people arriving and leaving.
The staff though appear committed. Several employees I spoke to had worked there for between 16 and 20 years. Their experience and knowledge are invaluable, particularly when other parts of the prison service struggle with recruitment and retention.
The most sobering part of the visit was learning about the lives of those who end up behind bars.
Hannah Jones, Head of Education and Policy (Prisons) at the Ministry of Justice, painted a bleak picture of the disadvantages experienced by many prisoners long before they encounter the criminal justice system.
Around one in four prisoners have been in care, she explained, rising to one in two among those under 25. Around two-thirds experienced childhood deprivation, measured through eligibility for free school meals, while one in four have been expelled from mainstream education.
She also highlighted the prevalence of learning difficulties - 56 per cent of prisoners in England - and extremely low literacy levels among people entering prison, in some cases equivalent to a reading age of just eight.
These figures tell a story of poverty, fractured childhoods, educational exclusion and lost opportunities. In many cases, the failures began long before the offences.
It raises the question: How many people in prison have already been failed by the systems that were supposed to support them?
This year, Lee Child has committed to the role of Prison Reading Laureate, and on the day of my visit he had returned to work with 48 men for a second workshop.
At an earlier session, he had gifted them copies of his first Jack Reacher novel, Killing Floor. This time, they were coming together to discuss it.
He had also encouraged the prisoners to email him directly, opening up an extraordinary line of communication between a globally successful author and men serving time behind bars.
One prisoner had sent him what Child described as a “rather good novel”, while another had sent him two film scripts.
It was a powerful reminder that behind prison walls are people with imaginations, ambitions and stories of their own. Given encouragement, some were already discovering their voices as writers.
For Child, the secret of getting people to read is uncomplicated: give them something they actually want to read.
Prisoners had told him that the books they encountered at school were boring. For people who have struggled with education, reading can become associated with failure, embarrassment or simply peer pressure from being seen as uncool.
His solution is to make it irresistible. The books, he explained, need a “strong narrative engine”. They should be fast, exciting and compelling enough to keep readers turning the pages. The writer should do the hard work, allowing the reader to enjoy the ride.
And the power of a story is something Child understands better than most. Asked what makes a good book, he jokes that the publishing industry has always maintained there are two things that make a book successful, but nobody knows what they are.
His own approach is practical - ask a question at the beginning of a story, he says, and don’t reveal the answer until the end. The reader is compelled to keep going.
It is the mechanism that has made Jack Reacher one of the most recognisable characters in modern popular fiction, and precisely the sense of page-turning anticipation Child wants to introduce to prisoners.
He describes Quick Reads as a “gateway drug” to reading, and joked perhaps that was not the best turn of phrase to use in a prison but meaning that books need to be an enjoyable encounter that might develop into a lifelong habit.
The initiative marks the 20th anniversary of Quick Reads, which produces short, accessible books for adults who lack reading confidence or have fallen out of the habit.
Eleven titles have been selected with input from prisoners and prison staff, spanning crime fiction, memoir, wellbeing and creative writing.
Crime and thrillers feature prominently.
Child’s High Heat takes a teenage Jack Reacher to New York during the blackout of 1977. Bradford author A. A. Dhand’s Darkness Rising features detective Harry Virdee, while Leye Adenle’s Cell One is a fast-moving thriller set in Lagos.
There are also books by Dreda Say Mitchell, Fiona Cummins and Alex Wheatle.
Other titles explore personal experiences that may resonate with prisoners.
Lemn Sissay’s My Name Is Why recounts his childhood in the care system and search for identity. Dr Alex George’s The Mind Manual offers advice on mental wellbeing, while Cathy Rentzenbrink’s Write It All Down encourages readers to tell their own stories.
Former SAS soldier Andy McNab’s Today Everything Changes is particularly relevant.
At 17, McNab had the reading age of a nine-year-old. His childhood had been marked by poverty and petty crime, but learning to read helped transform his future.
“Reading not only provided me with an education and the ability to compete in the world but also sparked my imagination and that gave me a positive outlook for my future,” he says.
It is a compelling example of how literacy can open up opportunities that once seemed beyond reach.
Reading in prison might be regarded simply as a way of passing the time, but those behind the programme believe its benefits extend much further.
Child argues that reading is fundamentally different from passively absorbing social media. It requires imagination and mental energy. The reader creates the characters, landscapes and emotions in their own mind.
In an environment where prisoners have little control over their daily lives, that imaginative freedom is significant.
Research into reading and wellbeing also suggests that even short periods spent with a book can help reduce stress. In the pressured environment of a prison, anything that improves wellbeing may benefit both prisoners and staff. Lee quoted the Queen’s Reading Room research team: “A neuroscientific study commissioned by The Queen’s Reading Room charity found that just five minutes of reading fiction can reduce stress by nearly 20%.”
He said: “Reading can bring equanimity to both prisoners and staff. If reading can make someone’s day a bit better and promote a calmer environment then that can only be a good thing.”
Karen Napier MBE, Chief Executive of The Reading Agency, explains: “When we put a book directly into someone’s hands, we are offering more than words on a page. Reading can offer escape, connection and space for reflection, while supporting wellbeing, confidence and learning.”
Crucially, the programme has been shaped by listening to prisoners about what they want to read, rather than prescribing what they ought to enjoy. Whether the attraction is crime fiction, memoir, comics or manga, the starting point should be enjoyment rather than obligation.
For Hannah Jones at the Ministry of Justice, the ambition goes beyond conventional rehabilitation.
She describes the approach as, “active desistance rather than passive rehabilitation”.
Rather than treating prisoners as passive recipients of programmes intended to change their behaviour, the aim is to give them opportunities to make positive choices, develop skills and imagine different futures.
Reading cannot eliminate poverty, repair broken family relationships or guarantee employment. But completing a book, developing confidence or discovering an unexpected talent can be meaningful steps towards personal change.
The prisoners who have begun writing novels and screenplays following Child’s encouragement, offer a glimpse of what that might look like.
The national programme will therefore extend beyond distributing books, with author workshops, creative writing sessions, dedicated National Prison Radio content and resources for prison libraries, education teams and peer supporters.
The challenge will be to turn the initial enthusiasm into something lasting.
There is a wider social question at the heart of this initiative.
If so many in prison experience poverty, educational exclusion, care-system involvement and poor literacy, shouldn’t we be doing more to intervene before they reach the criminal justice system?
The evidence of disadvantage presented at Preston suggests that any serious conversation about prisons must also consider schools, families, public services and the opportunities available to children growing up in poverty.
It’s useful to look to other countries that have lower prison populations. Denmark has around 69 per 100,000 residents in prison, compared to about 170 per 100,000 in the UK.
Denmark also has reduced socioeconomic and equity gaps. That’s’ been credited in part to its investment into education and deep cultural foundations around lifelong learning.
Singapore has invested heavily in early literacy, school libraries, reading programmes and family engagement, while its education system places strong emphasis on building foundational language skills from the earliest years.
Both demonstrate the value of treating reading as a national priority rather than a narrow school subject.
William Sieghart, Chair of The Henry Smith Foundation said that rather having one just year of the National Year of Reading, we should be aiming for ten years or more. It requires a generational shift to create reading as a national priority.
There is also a growing need to understand how reading competes with the attention economy. Passive scrolling and algorithm-driven social media can consume hours without offering the sustained concentration, imagination or reflection demanded by a book. The effects are not limited to literacy. Constant exposure to outrage, misinformation and polarising content can contribute to anxiety, division and aggression. Evidence-based behavioural science could help us design better interventions, encouraging people to replace some passive screen time with activities that strengthen attention, empathy and emotional regulation.
Reading should not be presented as a moral cure-all, or as a simplistic alternative to technology. Digital tools can support learning and widen access to information. But if we want children and adults to develop the ability to concentrate, imagine another person’s experience and think critically, reading for pleasure remains one of the most accessible and powerful tools available.
The programme has taken around a year to develop, bringing together The Reading Agency, the Ministry of Justice, prison services across the UK, publishers and charitable funders.
The Henry Smith Foundation has provided the principal funding, with additional support from The Balcombe Trust and Clays. Former prisons minister James Timpson has also been among those helping advance the initiative.
As Lee Child commented, a book is pragmatic and simple. It is relatively inexpensive, requires no sophisticated technology and can be read alone, shared, discussed or passed on.
Whether the programme ultimately reduces reoffending will require proper evaluation. Distributing half a million books is an extraordinary logistical achievement, but its lasting value will depend on what happens after those books reach their readers.
Even so, Karen Napier offers a compelling measure of its potential: “If we only make an impact on one in 10 prisoners, that is a significant outcome.”
Across the prison estate, that could represent thousands of people discovering a different relationship with reading.
The challenges awaiting many outside Preston’s prison gates remain considerable. Somewhere within those walls, a man may be reading his first novel. Another may be discovering that he can write. Or maybe, someone who once believed books were boring, difficult or simply not meant for him might now find himself desperate to discover what happens next.
Perhaps the real promise of this initiative is the possibility that a story can interrupt another story - one shaped by disadvantage, exclusion and repeated mistakes - and offer the beginnings of a different ending.
Lee ended his interview by saying, “This is not a bunch of do-gooders just asking people to read more. With all the stuff going on in the world right now, the multiple teams who have worked on this with kindness are offering a pragmatic response to some of society’s most pressing problems.”
Jack Reacher may be a fictional hero, but at HMP Preston, Lee Child is hoping the real transformation will happen not on the page, but in the lives of the people turning it.
Quick Reads in Prisons is led by The Reading Agency as part of the National Year of Reading 2026. Nearly half a million books are being distributed across prisons throughout the UK, supported by The Henry Smith Foundation, The Balcombe Trust and Clays.
Header image: Lee Child (fourth from left) with members of the team from The Reading Agency, Ministry of Justice and the prison service on 15 October 2026 HMP Preston. (Photo credit MOJ.)
