Forever Lost, Forever Gone

In 1974 Paddy Joe Hill was charged alongside five other men with the biggest mass murder on the British mainland - the Birmingham pub bombings.

Arrested and brutally beaten by members of the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad (since disbanded), Hill was condemned by false scientific evidence.

He was deprived of his freedom for sixteen years, three months and twenty-three days. Paddy Joe recreates his rough and tumble Belfast childhood, his struggles as a young petty villain in Birmingham and later as a man on the straight and narrow with a growing family.

Disturbingly frank about his own rage and fear, Hill evokes the events leading up to his arrest, his rebellions against the system, his gradual alienation from his family, the nail-biting appeals, the elation of at last regaining his freedom.

Released from the culture of violence in Britain's prison system, Hill offers constructive ideas about judicial and penal reform and an account of the pain of readjustment in the outside world.