Author & teacher Andy West: ‘In jail, philosophy comes from the ground up, not the top down’

Andy West is the author of The Life Inside, a beautifully observed memoir that starts with his chaotic and challenging childhood. The men in his family – his father, brother and uncle – are all involved in crime, and spend time in prison. There is drunkenness and addiction, bailiffs at the door. He visits his much loved brother “at work” (he was “about six” when he first went to see him in prison). 

Later on, grappling with all this leads to a crippling form of OCD as he navigates the shame and survivor's guilt he feels about escaping his brother’s life. He puts this down to being a decade younger, which allowed for a “childhood in two parts”: his mother remarries, a teacher takes him under his wing and he eventually does a degree in philosophy, which leads to his teaching the subject in prisons. He talks to prisoners about Beckett, Kafka and Homer, and together they examine notions of freedom, guilt and memory in ways that are as enlightening as they are moving. 

The Life Inside was recently adapted for TV by playwright Dennis Kelly and Waiting for the Out, starring Josh Finan in the lead role of Dan, is currently showing on the BBC to widespread acclaim. The Times’s reviewer called it: “The most original prison drama I have seen”.

Now 39, West lives in east London and continues to teach in prisons. He is estranged from his father but close to his family. 

Well, the book and show emerged from feelings of isolation and disconnection. Prisoners being isolated because they're in a cell, solitary confinement, apart from family members; my emotional isolation because of the way I'd internalised my own family's imprisonment, and grown up with feelings of inherited shame and guilt. To go from an experience which is so sort of alienated to one where people are saying “I watched this and it really touched me” is very moving. Dennis Kelly just really got the spirit of the book and translated that so well. 

Foremost with feelings of pride and excitement. I'm really lucky with my family; they've always wanted me to do well. I've met enough people to know that not all families want that. Some of mine really love [the programme] and engage with it, others love the fact of it, but aren't necessarily interested in watching it. It's just a reminder to me that we [all] have a different relationship with the past, and it's a very eccentric thing to do as a writer, to say: “OK, all this stuff that's happened in my private life, I'm going to write it all down and tell everyone about it.” I did feel a sort of strong duty of care around it.

I think maybe by an episode of deep anxiety that I experienced. People very close to me actually found out something new about me by reading my book. So I think I got a few phone calls around that period of, like, “I didn't know you were experiencing this” or "I didn't know you felt that way”. I mean, I don't call it OCD for various reasons, but the book, more or less, charts a horrible, chronic period of OCD [he is immobilised by thoughts of harming others, particularly burning his house down], which I'm very grateful to say I'm not in the throes of anymore. 

Well, the first half of my childhood was very chaotic. There were big debts, drugs, alcohol. My dad would become aggressive when drunk, and in the way that alcohol was part of the sort of boredom and unemployment, my brother had an addiction to harder drugs [he is clean now]. It was very messy and tense. I missed a lot of school. And then the second half of my childhood was with my stepdad, who was a double-glazing salesman and ironed his shirt every day before he went to work. And so then there were these other values of hard work, gratitude, responsibility. It wasn't affluent, but also the wolf wasn't at the door in the same way. 

People ask me why I went in a different direction to my brother and dad, and there are so many layers to it, but one of them is clearly socioeconomic. I work in Feltham [Young Offenders Institution], and I know there's 14,15 year olds who are dealing drugs so that mum can pay her bills, but I wasn't that kid at that stage. And I'm really glad for it, because with all the other influences in my life, it could have very easily been different. 

I went to an open day at a sixth form college that some friends were going to and I met a philosophy teacher there and, you know, I was often argumentative, oppositional at school. I thought I knew more than my teachers, which doesn’t get you very far. But I think in philosophy, it sort of does. Whereas in most classes you'll get sent out of the room for that kind of behaviour, in philosophy you can fold that stuff in!

Crucially, my [A-level philosophy] teacher, Robert, sort of said: “OK, I'll give you a chance.” And he gave me a chance: he gave me many a lunch hour and many times after school as well, just to say: “Look, I know what you're trying to say, but this is how you write a sentence, actually”. Just offering that nurture. And in fact we have an ongoing friendship which has really impacted my life. And I think if you're someone whose life has been significantly changed through the possibilities of education, there is something very life-affirming about going on to teach yourself.

I've always felt a certain amount of awe and fear, just around the institution. You often have to travel to these faraway places and there’s this kind of feeling that you're on the edge of places – you're somewhere quite obscure and neglected. So there's the emotional weight of them. Physically, I've never felt intimidated. 

Well, as a philosophy teacher, you should always put yourself in a place where you can be surprised. Otherwise the conversation is just the playing-out of a preconception. At university, philosophy is a set of propositions and concepts, and it's very top-down. I'm not interested in philosophy for analytical or academic reasons; I want to have philosophical conversations because of how they reveal people. Often the kind of stoicism I’ve found in prison isn’t a stoicism that comes from a university library: it’s “these are the vicissitudes of my life, this is the way I have found to survive them and this is me articulating that”. You see the self-restraint. It's philosophy from the ground up, rather than the top down.

 People sometimes ask me why I do what I do. Is it to help with rehabilitation, or change the system? Honestly, that note is the thing: that's why. Actually, it's really hard to effect change in prison. It's really hard to just run your class. It's really hard to get people unlocked, to get them to your room, to be there for two, three hours without something kicking off. It really is just getting through the day. It's not the violence or the chaos – it's [the way] nothing works. You were supposed to be unlocked an hour ago, nobody's told you what's going on. You were supposed to have a family visit today but it's not happened, no one's told you why. People, myself included, become very ground down, but within that someone's saying: “When I'm here, I'm somewhere else. I'm in a world of stories and ideas and possibilities and reflection.” That's a reason to go in again tomorrow.

Waiting for the Out is on BBC One and iPlayer. The Life Inside is published by Picador