Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe tells Hay Festival about sewing in Iranian prison

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has shared how crafting gave her inspiration and hope in the years she spent detained in an Iranian prison. Speaking at Hay Festival on Thursday, she recounted how getting permission to have fabrics sent to her offered a lifeline, not just for her but also fellow inmates. The British-Iranian charity worker was detained by the Iranian authorities in April 2016 and held in a political prison for nearly six years, used as leverage - a diplomatic pawn to put pressure on London. While incarcerated, Zaghari-Ratcliffe made clothes for her daughter Gabriella and neckerchiefs for the other women there. "I was not a confident seamstress [before prison]," she told the gathered crowd in Hay-on-Wye, Powys. "My mum used to do sewing, but she would never allow me to use her sewing machine - and I'll never forgive her for that, because there was this urge in me to sew. We laugh about it now." She said she used to purchase fabrics from the luxury department store Liberty London and her mother-in-law bought her a sewing machine and encouraged her to sew. But she felt the fabrics were "too special" to use, and it was only in prison she realised she "could overcome the challe

May 30, 2026 → May 30, 2026