Foreword by Irvine Welsh
''My life sentence had actually started the day I left my mother''s womb...''
Jimmy Boyle grew up in Glasgow-s Gorbals. All around him the world was drinking, fighting and thieving. To survive, he too had to fight and steal- Kids- gangs led to trouble with the police. Approved schools led to Borstal, and Jimmy was on his way to a career in crime.
By his twenties he was a hardened villain, sleeping with prostitutes, running shebeens and money-lending rackets. Then they nailed him for murder. The sentence was life - the brutal, degrading eternity of a broken spirit in the prisons of Peterhead and Inverness. Thankfully, Jimmy was able to turn his life around inside the prison walls and eventually released on parole.
A Sense of Freedom is a searing indictment of a society that uses prison bars and brutality to destroy a man''s humanity and at the same time an outstanding testament to one man''s abili
