An indian summer's sun beats down on a breathtaking landscape.

Wordsworth Trust poet Jack Mapanje sniggers at the suggestion he should be down by the lakeside soaking up Grasmere inspiration.

His drive comes from another continent, where African sun did little to lighten the lives of around a million political prisoners, banged up in brutal and bleak Malawi hellholes.

Jack was one of them for three years, seven months, 16 days and 12 hours, incarcerated in the country's top notorious maximum high security prison.

He thinks himself lucky not to have been among the 10,000 killed for speaking out against injustice and oppression in his country and the infamous 33-year reign of terror by now dead dictator Hastings Banda.

Home right now is a little pad, set amid picture-postcard Dove Cottage.

The rest of his immediate family is based in York, where they settled after Jack's release.

His liberation came after a high profile, worldwide campaign, featuring luminaries like Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard and Antonia Fraser.

He says his public arrest in 1987 was more than a catalyst in a fight for freedom.

"It created a whole underground movement for change," explains Jack.

His " crime" had been to publish poetry collection Chameleons and Gods, while studying for his PhD in London.

The book stirred a whirlwind of controversy in Malawi and Jack Mapanje became a marked man.

" The philosophy back home was simple.

Anyone who came too close to power, or criticised, was eliminated."

Returning home to head the English department at Malawi University, it was only a matter of time before the literary activist was seized and thrown into jail.

Conditions were mind-blowing for a cosmopolitan academic, held without charge or trial.

Initially locked up in isolation, visitors were barred for 22 months.

There were no books, newspapers, radio, contact with his wife and three children, or the outside world.

Around him 45 fellow political prisoners were waiting to have death sentences carried out.

"I'd left the university to buy fish and chips when I was arrested.

I was placed in handcuffs and taken to my house, which was ransacked in front of my terrified mother and three children.

"As I was taken away, they didn't know if they would ever see me again."

An Irish priest and colleague had seen what had happened and speaking Gaelic alerted Irish-speaking friends in York.

A call in English would have been too dangerous.

The long fight for his freedom immediately swung into action.

"There was a lot of brutality around.

It didn't happen to me because I made a pact with myself to survive by following the rules.

" The punishment cell was terrible.

People were held bent double, handcuffed and in leg irons.

They were covered in cold water and left for many days without food.

"You put your faith in God, played their game, or committed suicide."

Jack later learned the BBC had broadcast the "poet's arrest".

The subsequent protests gave the regime "the biggest shock of its life".

One of the most awful depravations for Jack was the lack of books, pens and paper.

Poems were composed in his head, remembered, and when eventually committed to paper, hugely acclaimed.

His boyhood had been spent in a lovely remote village, still the most beautiful place in the world for Jack.

Home was little more than a shelter, no glass in the windows, no power or running water.

His father had gone off to find work in South Africa and never returned, leaving a stoic, hard-working wife to rear the family.

"Mother brewed beer to pay the school fees," said Jack.

When the struggle became too much, she packed up her boys and moved to her brother's farm and he helped support the family.

By the end of primary school, Jack was one of the top pupils in the whole country, winning one of only 20 national scholarships to get free secondary education.

"I was to go to America to study medicine, but politics got in the way," he grinned.

"I loved justice.

Justice and freedom were, are, my things.

As a prefect at boarding school I refused to report fellow pupils and was thrown out for half a term."

After a degree in literature and philosophy at the University of Malawi, he completed a masters and PhD in London.

In England, he could write freely, using poetry as ammunition against a hated regime.

His stand left him a marked man.

"People in position back home didn't like my work.

I was too clever for them".

His is enjoying Grasmere and important work is emerging.

His most recent publication Skipping Without Ropes is being followed by a compilation of African prisoners' writings.

Jack's autobiography is also in the pipeline.

In April he received a major award from the African Literature Association of America for his contribution to literature and human rights.

His future is uncertain, but there is an ambition - "to get a proper job!"