Here are the first pictures of Lucy Connolly following her release from prison, walking the dogs in the evening sunshine.
The 42-year-old former childminder headed out with her parents Ricky and Valerie and several family pets, including her beloved German Pointer Harley, after tasting freedom for the first time in more than a year.
Connolly was earlier reunited with husband Ray, a Conservative councillor in their hometown of Northampton, and 13-year-old daughter Holly, during an emotional reunion at Ricky and Valerie’s home in the idyllic village of Milton Malsor.
After an afternoon catching up with friends and family members, she went on a long walk around local fields before returning to the detached property, on a quiet cul-de-sac, for dinner.
Flowers were delivered to the property around teatime, and one friend told the Mail that Lucy was ‘looking forward to a large glass of Whispering Angel,’ her favourite wine, to celebrate.
She had been freed at exactly 10.18am on Thursday when the gates of HMP Peterborough buzzed open and a white Skoda estate car whisked her over a set of speedbumps and up the driveway.
Watching from the grass verge, where a small group of reporters had been corralled, I caught a glimpse of the 42-year-old peering through the tinted windows, with what appeared to be a quite understandable mixture of relief and trepidation.
Despite her evident excitement at being reunited with Ray and Holly, not to mention Harley, life will never be quite the same for Connolly, who famously received a 31-month prison sentence for inciting racial hatred via an intemperate – and, some might argue, repulsive – post that she uploaded to X in the aftermath of last summer’s Southport murders.
The offending Tweet was published at 8.30pm on July 29, the day three little girls were stabbed to death at a Taylor Swift-themed dance party. Connolly wrongly suggested that the knifeman Axel Rudakubana had been an illegal immigrant.
‘Mass deportation now. Set fire to all the f***ing hotels full of the b******s for all that I care,’ it read. ‘While you’re at it take the treacherous government and politicians with them. I feel physically sick knowing what these families will now have to endure. If that makes me racist then so be it.’
Connolly, who claims to have been traumatised following the death of her 19-month-old son due to NHS blunders, deleted the post roughly three hours later, having apparently thought better of it.
However, it had by then been read by 310,000 people. She was subsequently arrested, charged, and despite being a first-time offender who posed little flight risk, refused bail.
The subsequent prosecution would eventually see her serve a total of 377 nights behind bars, or more than a week for each of the 51 words she’d originally uploaded. It has sparked a hugely divisive debate about free speech and so-called ‘two-tier justice’ in the social media era.
Most of that sentence was served at HMP Drake Hall in Staffordshire, though in mid-June she was moved to Peterborough, a grim-looking, 1,200-capacity facility surrounded by pebbledash walls topped with razor wire.
Supporters view Connolly, whose husband Ray is a Conservative councillor in their hometown of Northampton, as a political prisoner who received a grotesquely excessive sentence for committing an isolated and relatively minor offence in which no-one was physically harmed.
Critics meanwhile regard Connolly as a nasty racist who got just deserts for inciting violence, arguing that the riots which followed the Southport murders prove that ugly words can and sometimes do have devastating real-world consequences. This view has been endorsed by Sir Keir Starmer, who at one point told Parliament he will ‘always support’ the courts in such cases.
During her long months behind bars, the debate between these two camps has become increasingly hysterical, from time to time spilling over from social media to the political arena.
On Thursday, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch weighed in, arguing that Connolly’s ‘punishment was harsher than the sentences handed down for bricks thrown at police or actual rioting’. Ms Badenoch contrasted her fate with that of former Labour councillor Ricky Jones, who was recently charged with encouraging violent disorder after being filmed calling for anti-migrant protestors to have their throats slit, but ‘pleaded not guilty and was acquitted by a jury who saw his words as a disgusting remark made in the heat of the moment, not a call to action.’
Reform’s Nigel Farage, whose party have long campaigned for Connolly’s release, meanwhile said he was ‘delighted that she is free at last’, telling me that ‘her unfair punishment makes her an important figure as we fight to get free speech back’.
The centre of this fractious maelstrom is doubtless an uncomfortable place to be, and Connolly, who was wearing a pink top and denim shorts, sought to shield herself from watching reporters as she was whisked through an industrial estate onto the dual carriageway for her one-hour journey to Northampton.
Back at their home, a 1930s semi in a placid suburb to the west of the town centre, Ray was already getting ready for the day ahead.
He rose at 7.45am and stepped into the garden in his pyjamas to water the hanging baskets.
Speaking outside the front door, which was adorned with a floral wreath, he told the Daily Mail that his family’s focus from now would be ‘to get our lives back on track’.
Ray said that both he and Lucy had coped with her imprisonment ‘relatively well’. But he added: ‘The only person who hasn’t is our 13-year-old daughter. She has found it very difficult not having her mum at home. So well done Keir Starmer for making it so difficult for a 13–year-old girl. Let’s give him a pat on the back.’
It almost certainly won’t be his last word on the matter.
A couple of hours later, he left the house with Holly and a set of golf clubs.
After a quick game of pitch-and-putt, they travelled to Milton Malsor. Here, away from the glare of the media, the family was reunited.
After a year apart, the woman who tweeted her way to the frontline of the war over free speech has a lot of catching up to do.