Vicky Pryce stripped of honour by the Queen But her plot backfired, and ultimately both she and her ex-husband, a former Lib-Dem Cabinet minister, were jailed for eight months in March for perverting the course of justice. Miss Pryce, a leading economist, has written a book entitled "Prisonomics" about her time behind bars and in particular the plight of women inmates. In an extract published in the Mail on Sunday, she recalled one of her first days at Holloway in north London before she was transferred to an open prison. "On Wednesday I had received some 20 letters, causing the officer in charge to profess that in all his time at Holloway he had never seen anyone receive so much post in one day," she wrote. The girls all came to my cell to marvel at the number of letters on my bed - and also to see whether there were any unfranked stamps that they could peel off and reuse. Stamps had become the new parallel currency, functioning like cigarettes used to. Today it was a feast for them as 40 letters arrived. Miss Pryce did not commit any offence as she did not sell the unfranked stamps or re-use them herself, but Royal Mail urged people not to follow her example. The economist's book, to be published later this month by the firm behind Damian McBride's controversial memoirs, also observes that most women in prison are there because of something their husbands, boyfriends or fathers had done.