Tessa West worked in prisons and on prison-related matters for many years and holds two master’s degrees. When teaching literacy she won a Winston Churchill Travel Fellowship which enabled her to study prison education in Scandinavia. While head of a prison education department she was awarded a Cropwood Fellowship at the Institute of Criminology in Cambridge. After a period as an assistant governor in a contracted-out prison, she worked for the United Nations Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Department in Vienna. She then served two three-year terms as an independent member of the Parole Board. She visited prisons in countries as diverse as Zambia, Hungary and New Zealand. In respect of The Curious Mr Howard she was given the Arthur Welton Award which enabled her to carry out research in Ukraine, where John Howard lived during the last years of his life and died. She is the author of Prisons of Promise (Waterside Press, 1997) and several novels.