Porridge and privilege

A Prison Diary, Volume II: Purgatory
by Jeffrey Archer
Pan, £6.99, pp. 310, ISBN 0330426370

A Prison Diary, Volume III: Heaven
by Jeffrey Archer
Macmillan, £18.99, pp. 478, ISBN 1405032626

In an extraordinary fax to the Director-General of the Prison Service, Martin Narey, the Home Secretary David Blunkett set down his feelings in an unequivocally forthright manner:

I am sick and tired of reading Jeffrey Archer stories about the cushy conditions in which he was placed, the freedom he has been given, the opportunity to do anything he likes, and the snook he is cocking at all of us.

News had just reached him (via a highly coloured account in the Sun) that whilst out from North Sea Camp open prison on a community visit to see his wife, Archer had attended a luncheon party at Gillian Shephard’s home in Thetford. ‘I expect you to take immediate and decisive disciplinary action,’ Blunkett thundered on. Narey was ordered to ‘report personally to me’ once the turbulent prisoner had been effectively neutralised.

A foreigner unfamiliar with the on-going saga of Lord Archer of Weston-super-Mare might easily be forgiven for assuming such a fire and brimstone approach emanated from a particularly reactionary Tory politician. Michael Howard would fit the bill admirably, were it not for the fact that in this topsy-turvy tale of trading places, he and a number of his colleagues — Quentin Davis, Michael Portillo, Malcolm Rifkind, Brian Mawhinney (then the shadow home secretary) to name but a few of the luminaries to grace Archer’s pages — find themselves queuing up to take their places on the other side of the prison visiting room formica-topped table, anxious to stand by their man as he struggles hopelessly on against a vengeful New Labour establishment.

Two years ago, when I reviewed the first volume of these diaries, I had been annoyed at the almost palpable air of schadenfreude amongst the broadsheet literati.