Speaking at the Hay Festival in Hay-on-Wye on Thursday, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe recounted how sewing came to serve as a quiet but powerful lifeline during the years she was held in an Iranian political prison — years in which she is widely understood to have been used as a diplomatic pawn in negotiations between Tehran and London. The British-Iranian charity worker was detained in April 2016 and would not be released for nearly six years, a period that has since been examined as an episode of what critics have called hostage diplomacy. It was during that confinement that Zaghari-Ratcliffe discovered a creative impulse she had not previously been able to act upon. She told the gathered audience that her mother had never permitted her to use a sewing machine, and that it was only inside prison — with its stark restrictions and enforced stillness — that the skill was finally developed.

Rehabilitation activities were offered to inmates, and a teacher is said to have helped her construct a dress pattern from scratch. Perhaps the most resonant detail of her account concerned the Liberty London fabrics she had long kept in reserve for some future special occasion. Getting permission to bring fabric into the prison required written authorisation, and considerable effort on the part of her husband Richard. Once inside, she chose to distribute the material among her fellow prisoners, offering each woman what she described as a piece of liberty that they didn't have.