He spent years in and out of prison - a single book helped change everything

"A book club in prison is the best thing on planet Earth, it really is," says Omar Mentesh, who spent nearly two decades in and out of jail from his teenage years.

"It's just people sharing, from all walks of life... and when they're in the book club, they find the book actually leads the conversation into other things. And I think for people who struggle to open up it was great."

The 44-year-old, from South Woodford in east London, features in a new BBC documentary led by Queen Camilla, called The Book That Changed My Life, which looks at how reading had a profound impact on five different people.

For Mentesh, what began as a means of escape became something that would change him forever.

Mentesh grew up on the Maiden Lane Estate in Camden.

"If you're going to be a kid, it's a perfect estate because there's a cubbyhole, alleyways, garages and places to run around. And unfortunately, places a kid shouldn't go," he tells BBC London.

One day, aged five, he and a group of friends went exploring through a hole in the fence by the estate's playground, which led to a train track.

"I remember taking a step forward and just feeling like someone was picking me up and was shaking me - and obviously I was being electrocuted.

"My shoes are the thing that saved my life, because they had rubber soles... but then the electricity had to exit somewhere and it exited through my head."

He woke up in hospital and while he says he doesn't remember feeling pain, he required plastic surgery "as my hands were melted", and suffered speech problems.

The accident meant he had to attend his early school years with bags over his injured hands and "I just couldn't write, it just felt like everyone else is cracking on and I just can't do it".

Feeling ostracised as he fell behind his classmates, Mentesh began breaking out of his primary school and before long his education became a distant past.

At the same time his parents' relationship broke down meaning his older brothers were left to help support the family and so "they just started committing crime, they was bunking off school, and I saw them doing it, and I just mimicked".

"I remember breaking into cars early... it's like they're legends and I was trying to copy it," he explains.

By the age of 15 Mentesh had received his first prison sentence.

But it was while locked up alone in Feltham Young Offender Institution that he first learned what reading could do as he found a copy of Jack Higgins's 1970s novel, The Eagle Has Landed, lying in his cell.

"It could have been any book, but I think that book there, the cover, it just enticed me," he says.

In that moment the World War Two spy thriller provided a means to escape his surroundings, but Mentesh later realised it was doing so much more.

"I probably read about half of it, understood about a quarter of it, but even just understanding a quarter of the book, that opened up the world for me.

"And it's not like I had an epiphany... It was just 'I appreciate reading' and then that there was enough because once you appreciate reading, the path is set, the foundations are set, and as long as you keep reading, change can only come."

Even so, Mentesh was still ingrained in organised crime and once released he was soon back to a life where "it was steal this and bring it to him, he'll give us money".

He says he lived by a "code in that you don't have to cause harm or commit violence to make money" as he began stealing printing and broadcast equipment to order.

Further prison sentences followed but each one would return him to his reading.

"I had to wait for that merry-go-round to go again, to read, develop my personality, my strengths, my values. And then every time I would go, I'd build up, I'd be growing as a person," he says.

However, it was his final crime that would have the most profound effect.

It was again intended to be a commercial burglary, this time at a jewellery store, but an error meant for the first time during one of his burglaries "there was a victim in the shop".

Mentesh doesn't elaborate on what happened other than saying that it "didn't sit well" and he will "forever apologise and regret what I did".

Jailed for seven years, reduced to five-and-a-half years on appeal, and with his personal life having "fallen apart", Mentesh faced "the perfect vacuum for books to fill that void".

"I had enough time to really build my education up where it needed to be to catch up what I lost when I was young," he explains.

At the same time he took on a role representing black, minority and ethnic prisoners, building on a job he did during another sentence in 2006.

"I learned a lot in that role, finding the skills I have in leading people who are in the wrong way in a hostile environment. And there's nothing more hostile than being a BME (black, minority and ethnic representative) in Exeter Prison," he says.

Released for the final time in 2017 and at that point in his 30s and homeless, Mentesh found himself sleeping on his sister's sofa before he moved to a hostel.

He then met his now-wife and after finding out she was pregnant "that was it, and I said, 'what do I do from here?'".

Building on the education he had gained while in jail, he first went to college for two years before attending Queen Mary University where he gained a degree in business management.

Job placements followed, as well as work with charities, before he set up Anabranch, a company which works to rehabilitate prisoners.

Mentesh says the firm's name, taken from the part of a river that splits off before reconnecting with the main waterway further downstream, is apt to his own story.

"I was part of society for a little bit and then I was removed from it, and then I was put back further downstream," he says.

Along with this work, he remains a keen book advocate, working with charities to support literacy programmes, as well as still being a prolific reader.

The next book on his reading list is Previous Engagements by Bruce Shand, the Queen's father. She gave it to him following the BBC documentary.

The book examines how Shand came to love books while a prisoner of war during World War Two, something Mentesh relates to from his discovery of The Eagle Has Landed in his first prison cell.

"For me, books meant a whole lot more than just passing time," he says.

"I thought I was just getting knowledge... I didn't know a book actually has the power to change a person."

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