The art of prison writing attracts inmates for a variety of motives. Prisoners may compose them to further a political cause, as in Mr Mandela's case. Some attempt to exculpate themselves; others to profit from crimes they may have committed. In almost all cases they are a welcome distraction from the daily indignities of incarceration.

· "They've now supplied me with a Bic razor ... I consider cutting my throat, but the thought of failure and having to return to that awful hospital wing is enough to put anyone off."

Jeffrey Archer , disgraced Tory politician, on his first night in Belmarsh prison in A Prison Diary

· "Dear Christ! the very prison walls

Suddenly seemed to reel,

And the sky above my head became

Like a casque of scorching steel;

And, though I was a soul in pain,

My pain I could not feel."

Oscar Wilde in The Ballad of Reading Gaol. Developed while he was serving his sentence of hard labour for having gay relationships. It was published after his release

· "Are intellectuals an autonomous and independent social group, or does every social group have its own particular specialised category of intellectuals?"

Antonio Gramsci , the Italian Marxist, in one of 32 prison notebooks. He spent his last 11 years in Mussolini's prisons

· "Here was the house of the living dead, a life like none other upon earth"

Fyodor Dostoevsky in House of The Dead, written after he had been sentenced to death. As he faced a firing squad, a messenger arrived with the announcement that the tsar had commuted the death sentence

Owen Bowcott