Of course, being the energetic, Tigger-like creature that he is, the author does his best. He tries to regale us with exotic tales such as how, through a Latin American fellow-inmate, he attempted to buy a portrait by the Colombian artist Fernando Botero for $400,000, and he also makes the most of a story of how the same go-between imported on his behalf a $9,000 emerald. (Archer, we learn, intended to give it to his wife, Mary, as a Christmas present but, disappointingly, we never discover her reaction.) That these twin episodes should be the highlights of the narrative only goes to show how flat the rest is.
The former press proprietor, Lord Beaverbrook, always used to insist that no foreign correspondent should stay en poste for too long lest he or she lose the original sense of surprise that, he believed, accompanied first impressions. Maybe he was right — and that is what is wrong with this book. By the time Archer arrives at Wayland prison in Norfolk, he may be only 22 days into the four-year sentence he was given at the Old Bailey in July 2001, but he has already settled into the rhythm of institutional life and has forfeited a good deal of his capacity for indignation.
Of course, conditions are better at Wayland than they were at Belmarsh, and that does not help either. There is television in his cell, and this means we get endless accounts of test matches, to say nothing of a blow-by-blow commentary on 9/11.
Inevitably, this suggests that Archer is as much interested in the outside world as he is in that inside and, although he boasts of writing 2,000-3,000 words a day, he could have afforded to be a good deal more selective. To be fair, he shows some sign of being aware of this — at one stage confessing that he goes out daily to the exercise yard in the hope of being able “to pick up stories from the prisoners on different wings”.
If the book has a sub-plot, it lies in Archer’s abiding sense of resentment against Baroness Nicolson (at times referred to as mere “Ms Nicolson”, a dangerous game for this particular author to play) for delaying his transfer to an open prison. In Archer’s view, Nicolson achieved this by publicly calling for an inquiry into what had happened to the £57m he claimed to have raised for the Kurds from the “Simple Truth” campaign that he ran following the first Gulf war. Faced with such a demand, the Crown Prosecution Service felt it had no alternative but to investigate — and, as the possible subject of police inquiries, Archer temporarily forfeited his right to be classified as a category D prisoner.
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It is plain that the experience left a bitter taste — and, in this book, Emma Nicolson, who was once a close colleague of Archer’s at Conservative Central Office, is very much public enemy number one (the only rival for the title being Mr Justice Potts, who presided at his trial). His fellow prisoners, on the other hand, come out of his narrative rather well — and, if the book has a strength, it lies in the author’s portrayal of them.
From Dale, the “Mr Big” of Archer’s wing, through to the gifted artist Shaun (whose drawings appear here), they bring what life there is to the story. What the book lacks, though, is incident — and perhaps it was too much to hope for that, given that it is only an account of 67 humdrum days spent behind bars in an intermediate prison following his initial bang-up at a high-security jail and before his transfer to an open prison. The reader may get a better deal in the third (and concluding) part of this pre-planned trilogy, entitled, in advance, Northsea Camp: Heaven. At least that should include the details of his fall like Lucifer as a consequence of his unorthodox career as a tea-boy at the Theatre Royal, Lincoln, to say nothing of his illicit attendance at Gillian Shephard’s Sunday lunch party.
Oscar Wilde may not have had it so easy, but conceivably that is why he left a far more vivid evocation of the fate of those who lie in jail.
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