July 2020: Inside Time

Inside Time, the national newspaper for prisoners and detainees, has always been a vital source of information and interest for people in prison, and never more than right now.

Since lockdown, most of our reading groups have had to take a break. But
PRG and Give a Book are working hard to get books into prisons and
we’ve had some great feedback. We’ve also created a weekly handout
called ‘Book Stuff’ that we hope is getting distributed on the wings. It’s got
short stories, poems, quizzes and conundrums. Look out for it and ask
around if you haven’t seen it. Here’s a taste of what’s on offer.

Teasers

• Which is more real, a table or love? Thoughts or feelings? Liverpool FC or Mohamed Salah?
• My car has had a new engine. Is it still the same car?
• Was the wheel or the box humankind’s greatest invention? If neither, then what?

The Tyger

William Blake wrote and illustrated the poem for his 1794 collection called ‘Songs of Experience’. One critic has described it as a portrait of ‘strangeness, otherness and inhuman grandeur’. Do you agree?

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
 In the forests of the night;
 What immortal hand or eye,
 Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
 
In what distant deeps or skies.
 Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
 On what wings dare he aspire?
 What the hand, dare seize the fire?
 
And what shoulder, & what art,
 Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
 And when thy heart began to beat,
 What dread hand? & what dread feet?

 What the hammer? what the chain,
 In what furnace was thy brain?
 What the anvil? what dread grasp,
 Dare its deadly terrors clasp!
 
When the stars threw down their spears
 And water’d heaven with their tears:
 Did he smile his work to see?
 Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

 Tyger Tyger burning bright,
 In the forests of the night:
 What immortal hand or eye,
 Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

A quiz for July

  1. July 1, 1838: Who presented a paper to the Linnean Society in London on his theory of the evolution of species and natural selection?
  2. July 4, 1776: What was signed on this day in what was to become the United States of America?
  3. July 6, 1535: Who was executed after refusing to recognise King Henry VIII as head of the Church in England?
  4. July 10, 138: The death of which Roman Emperor who built a wall across northern Britain to keep out the Scottish tribes?
  5. July 18, 1920: A new national monument to the war dead was unveiled in Whitehall, London. What is the monument called and what does the word mean?
  6. July 21, 1969: What was the name of the space module that landed on the moon and who was the first astronaut to walk on the surface?
  7. July 25, 1814: Which engineer unveiled a steam locomotive called ‘The Blutcher’ that could haul eight carriages loaded with 30 tons of coal at the breakneck speed of 4 mph?
  8. July 27, 1953: What war, that cost an estimated five million lives, was formally ended with the signing of a peace agreement at Panmunjom?

Read the full article (and see the answers!) here.

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