Add this copy of Bird That Never Flew, the to cart. $33.49, like new condition, Sold by Lisa Van Munster rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Oshawa, ON, CANADA, published 1992 by Sinclair-Stevenson Limited.
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Seller's Description:
Fine in Fine jacket. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. BOOK: Corners, Spine Bumped; Light Shelf Rub to Boards; Edges Lightly Soiled; Heavy Yellowing Due to Age. DUST JACKET: Lightly Chipped; In Archival Quality Jacket Cover. CONTENTS: PART ONE 1 Jonnyboy 2 First Flight 3 Growing Pains 4 Garthamlock 5 Crime, Punishment and Pals 6 Still Running 7 Breaking Out and In 8 A Little Mischief 9 The Beggar Within 10 St Andrew's Reform School 11 Home Leave 12 Longriggend 13 Borstal Boy 14 My Wee Job 15 The Big House 16 More Porridge 17 Back to St Joseph's 18 A Bad Gamble 19 Scotty and the Gun 20 Dear John 21 A Big Mistake 22 The Appeal; PART TWO 23 The Draft to Hell 24 Back with a Vengeance 25 Homeward Bound 26 The Barlinnie Escape Trial 27 The Cages of Inverness 28 Savage Strength 29 Spare this Man 30 Dying Within 31 Psychological Control 32 A Hope in Hell; Postscript. SYNOPSIS: John Steele has spent most of his adult life in prison, often in solitary confinement. As a prisoner he entertained his fellow-cons with ballads and verses and was persuaded by one of them that he ought to write an account of his life, both for its own sake and as a cautionary tale. The result is an astonishing autobiography in which a ruthless self-portrait of a man for whom theft and escape seem synonymous with life itself is combined with a powerful denunciation of a system that brutalises and degrades both the prisoners and the gaolers. Steele grew up in the slums of Glasgow's East End, in a family for whom crime was a way of life. For his long-suffering mother and his blind, convivial grandmother he felt an uneasy mix of love and guilt. However he was terrorised and beaten by his father, a criminal who, by his violence, drove him out of the house and into a life of crime. Repeatedly sentenced as a boy for theft and shop-breaking, Steele was sent to a series of reform schools and eventually to Borstal. As he grew older, remand homes were replaced by Barlinnie Goal and--most devastating of all--a twelve year sentence to Peterhead, the prison reserved for Scotland's mot hardened criminals. Unable to bear what little life offered, the despair of prison governors and often vicious and sadistic warders, throughout his life he alternated between planning and executing every-more ingenious escapes and persistent refusal to co-operate. This resulted in his solitary confinement and in his shortly becoming one of the most punished prisoners in the history of the Scottish penal system. Remorseless in its account of brutality and suffering, both horrific and--notably in the escape scenes--immensely exciting, The Bird That Never Flew is a frightening account of a life frustrated and perverted by society.
