PRESS RELEASE

Prisoners Abroad welcomes Viscountess Harriet Bridgeman CBE, Martin Paisner CBE, Richard Price, Kit de Waal and Michael Willcox as new patrons. Each has been involved with Prisoners Abroad for many years and we are thrilled to have them show their support of our work with their patronship.

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Viscountess Harriet Bridgeman CBE has been a supporter of Prisoners Abroad for many years. She is the founder of the Bridgeman Art Library, a company that provides a large collection of fine art images. During her time as an editor and author, Harriet Bridgeman discovered the need for easier access to illustrations of works of art. The concept of the Bridgeman Art Library emerged in 1972 and developed to allow users to access thousands of images at the same time providing extra income for the museums, collections, artists and institutions which it represents. In 1997, Harriet was awarded the European Women of Achievement Award in the Arts. The award was given in recognition of the Bridgeman Art Library's promotion of European culture and the European scope of its clients, collections and research.

Martin Paisner CBE is a long-term supporter of Prisoners Abroad. He is a Private Client solicitor, a partner with Payne Hicks Beach since May 2020, having qualified in 1970 and been a partner with his late father’s practice, Paisner & Co (subsequently BCLP) since 1972.  He is well-known in the charity sector, acting as a trustee for several grant-making foundations and operational charities.  He was appointed CBE in June 2004 in recognition of his charitable services.  Martin is an Honorary Fellow of Queen Mary, University of London, Worcester College, Oxford, King’s College London and the Reichman University, Herzliya, Israel.  He also holds Honorary Doctorates of the University of Glasgow, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel and the Open University Israel.  He is a member of the Garrick Club and the Reform Club.

Richard Price served as Chair of Trustees for Prisoners Abroad for 7 years, stepping down at the end of 2020, but remains a passionate supporter of the work of the charity. He began his career as a Probation Officer, before being appointed Deputy Director of the International Year of the Child. He founded a public relations and marketing consultancy called The EuroPR Group where he was Managing Director for 25 years. During that time, he was also a Board Director of The Public Relations Consultants Association and Chairman of its International Committee. Richard is also former Chairman of The Oxford and Cambridge Club, the Merton Chamber of Commerce and Vice President of the Council of American States in Europe. He is a trustee of The Sixteen, a world-renowned UK choir, and a former trustee of the Merton Homelessness Project.

Kit de Waal served as a trustee of Prisoners Abroad from 2011 to 2014. She has worked in the criminal justice system for the majority of her working life, in criminal and family law and as a magistrate (Justice of the Peace). She sat on adoption panels, worked as an adviser for Social Services and has written training manuals on adoption and foster care, focusing on mixed parentage, minority ethnic communities, social cohesion and project management. Her debut novel My Name Is Leon was an international bestseller, shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize and won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award for 2017. In 2022 it was adapted for television by the BBC. Her second novel, The Trick to Time, was longlisted for the Women's Prize and her young adult novel Becoming Dinah was shortlisted for the Carnegie CLIP Award 2020. A collection of short stories, Supporting Cast, was published in 2020. An anthology of working-class memoir, Common People, was crowdfunded and edited by Kit in 2019. Kit founded her own TV production company, Portopia Productions and the Big Book Weekend, a free digital literary festival in 2020 and was named the FutureBook Person of the Year 2019. She is an ambassador of Well-being in the Arts and a trustee of The Reading Agency. Kit is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Professor and Writer in Residence at Leicester University. Her memoir Without Warning and Only Sometimes was published in August 2022.

Michael Willcox has been involved with Prisoners Abroad since 1994. He graduated in law from Manchester University and qualified as a solicitor in 1970. He has been a partner in a small number of law firms, both large and small, until his retirement from the SRA roll in July 2022. He was elected to The Academy of Estate and Trust Law, based in San Francisco, in 1984. He is a trustee of three charitable trusts and retired from eight other general purposes charities in more recent times.

You can find a full list of our patrons here.

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For Press:

Emily Richards, Head of Giving and Communications

[email protected]

T: +44 (0) 20 75616835