Becoming Mr Nice: THE HOWARD MARKS ARCHIVE

The million-selling Mr Nice was one of the most successful non-fiction books of the last two decades - the ultimate cult book. Now in Becoming Mr Nice, Howard Marks's daughter, the writer and lawyer Amber Marks, has collated and curated highlights from Howard's extensive and, until now, unseen personal archive. The book features jottings, drawings and photographs from Howard's Welsh childhood and Teddy boy years in post-war Britain; treasured mementos from the psychedelic scene at Oxford University and revolutionary 1960s London; a fascinating typescript account by Howard of his time on the run in the 1970s; hilarious transcripts and surveillance exhibits from Howard's trial at the Old Bailey in 1981, where he was famously acquitted of importing 15 tons of Colombian grass into the British Isles after calling evidence from an agent of the Mexican secret services; records of the international surveillance operation mounted against Howard at the height of the war on drugs; heart-breaking first-hand accounts of Howard and Judy's arrest in 1988; the hitherto undisclosed defence Howard had prepared to run before giving in to plead guilty and being sentenced to 25 years imprisonment in one of the toughest penitentiaries in the US; personal accounts of his time in prison; and the freedom of information requests that helped him to secure release. It also contains philosophical ramblings, dodgy smuggling references on the backs of envelopes, telephone transcripts of coded transactions, false identity documents, the business cards and letterheads of Howard's international business fronts, unpublished prison writings and private correspondence, and records of his rise to fame upon release in Loaded Britain. This beautifully illustrated and designed book will be essential reading for Mr Nice's legion of fans worldwide.