My story

If you have found this page after watching the film, hello.

You might be wondering how someone goes from a prison cell to sitting with the Queen talking about books. The truth is I did not do it on my own. A book I barely understood, a few people who noticed and a son I wanted to be proud of me did most of the work.

I will not pretend the bit in between was pretty. I left school at thirteen and went to prison at fifteen. I spent years breaking into businesses and I told myself nobody was getting hurt. That was not true and on my last sentence for a robbery in 2013, there was a woman working in that shop who did nothing but go to work that day and I made her afraid. I have not forgotten what I did and I never will.

I do not say that to shock anyone, or for any sympathy. I say it because it is true and because you cannot help anyone change if you pretend you never needed to.

Where I grew up, nobody was asking why a kid like me was the way he was. I had been electrocuted on a railway line at five, school made me feel stupid, home fell apart and nobody was looking for ADHD in a boy from a Camden estate. None of that is an excuse, but it is how it happens and it's still happening to kids now.

What turned it round was not one big moment. It was a book on a cupboard shelf at Feltham that I understood about a quarter of. It was a job as a rep on my last sentence, helping men who could not read the forms in front of them. It was a deputy governor who believed me when I said I wanted to change and walking into a hospital room on the day my son was born, speaking and watching him turn his head towards my voice. A month later, at thirty-six, I started college.

These days I run Anabranch Plus, which works with people in and leaving prison and I spend a lot of my time back in the kind of places I used to be locked up, sitting with people who are where I was. I also talk to anyone who will listen, from employers to prisons to radio phone-ins, about what actually helps.

Meeting the Queen was surreal by the way. Little old me at Clarence House and for someone who spent so many years at Her Majesty's pleasure, it was a whole new take on the phrase. I was so fidgety I dropped my biscuit. Can't take me anywhere.

If you are reading this from somewhere hard; a cell, a hostel, a sofa that is not yours, I want you to know you are not finished. I was not, even when I thought I was.

If you want the whole story, including the parts I have left out here, it is in my book, The Anabranch. Leave your email below and I will let you know when it's out.

Thanks for reading.

Omar