The Koestler Awards Scheme was the brainchild of Arthur Koestler, writes Dorothy Salmon. Koestler was the writer who was sentenced to death in Franco?s Spain, locked up by the French and held by the British in Pentonville Prison, and who then on his release became a powerful advocate of social reform. In 1960 he devised a plan for an annual competition for those in prison. By 1961 his idea had been agreed with the Prison Commission and the Home Secretary, and in 1962 the Koestler Awards... more