First published in 1982, this book describes a new kind of prison architecture that developed in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The book concentrates on architecture, but places it in the context of contemporary penal practice and contemporary thought. Beginning with an exploration on the eighteenth-century prisons before reform, the book goes on to consider two earlier kinds of imprisonment that were modified by eighteenth-century reformers. The theory and practice of prison design is covered in detail. The later parts of the book deals with alliance between architecture and reform, and with the connection between the utilitarian architecture of the reformed prisons and academic neo-classicism. The overall aim of the book is to show the profound change that was being wrought in the nature of architecture, which was exemplified in the reformed prisons. Architecture, one emblem of the social order, was now one of its fundamental instruments.

The third book in the best-selling MILL OF THE FLEA series, continuing the often farcical and always entertaining adventures of the author and his wife as they attempt to make a new life in rural France. Totally unlike any other book in the genre, FRENCH LETTERS takes the reader on another visit to a remote area of Normandy where time is of little value and reluctant tractors (and their drivers) are kick-started on frosty mornings with a tot of moonshine apple brandy. During another eventful year at the Mill of the Flea, the author and his wife once again encounter a host of improbable characters and situations, like the vegetarian couple who set up home next to a veal farm and an elderly post-mistress who grows highly illegal pot plants while enticing a colony of hornets to set up home in her attic -

In this hilarious collection of cautionary tales and anecdotes, George East discusses all the delights and drawbacks of finding, buying and restoring French property. HOME & DRY IN FRANCE follows the early adventures of George and Donella East as they make every mistake in the (not-then-written) book about how and how not to buy a second home across the Channel. Tellingly subtitled A YEAR IN PURGATORY, the book is much more than a listing of all the awful pitfalls awaiting the innocent abroad: it is the hilarious and always entertaining account of how a couple set out with a dream - and came close to turning it in to a nightmare.