"These writings were smuggled out of Her Majesty's prison between November 1966 and September 1969. They are the psychological form of 864, a pusher sentenced to four years meditation for customs evasion and possession of four pounds of hashish.

"Whisper Promotions was registered in October 1969, by Brian Barritt and David Ball, to fuse the illicit scripts into Whisper. In December 1970 a manuscript was delivered to Timothy and Rosemary Leary who endorsed it with a postscript -- 'The Wanderers'." [jacket blurb, UK hbk, 1971]

"In serving his time -- four years for bringing pot back from India -- the prisoner's personality melts away and he becomes part of his own fantasies as number 864." --Sid Webb (in New Musical Express )

"At its heart lies a cold laughter about the hypocrisy of the British drug laws and a horror at the sensory assault which imprisonment involves." --Laurie Taylor (in New Society )

"These scripts represent a mind tour peopled with real characters familiar to the British Gastro-gnome. Filled with phun and word-play, it inflates the monstrous denizens for inspection, and recognition." --Barrington Jennings (in Ink )

"It should be compulsory reading for judges, magistrates, lawyers, legislators, probation officers and anybody else on the outside looking in. But it's more of a scream than a whisper." --Roger Lewis (in Drugs & Society )

"It is difficult to attach a label to this work. It is probably closest to the writings of Jean Genet, William Burroughs or Allen Ginsberg..." --Jim Zacune (in Mind )