A PRISON DIARY

Lord Archer of Weston-super-Mare, a.k.a. Prisoner #FF8282, offers his view of life in the slammer after serving the first three weeks of a four-year sentence.

Archer, once Conservative candidate for Mayor of London and author of many a popular potboiler (Sons of Fortune, 2003, etc.), scarcely refers to the offense that took him from his Albert Embankment home to HMP Belmarsh, London’s high-security prison, along with murderers, drug-dealers, and a football hooligan. He does not mention that his sentence was for perjury, forgery, and obstruction of justice. We hear more about the nasty judge who punished him, though, and he’s mightily affronted about his treatment. The accommodations, the bedding, and the food are viewed with disdain and our diarist subsists largely on bottled water, digestive biscuits, and Spam. Clearly, he’s a man of elevated sensibilities and, as he would have it, fellow cons generally forswear dirty words in deference to his Lordship. Indeed, according to his report, most hold him in warm esteem. Prisoners, identified by name and crime (“Tony [marijuana only], Billy [murder],” and so forth), they ask for autographs and advice and, in turn, offer protection, extra eats, and doleful tales of stealing, dealing, and buggery. Still a concerned citizen, our Peer notes that “there are going to be some speeches I will have to make should I ever return to the House of Lords.” Meanwhile, he knows whom to address. “Are you still paying attention, Home Secretary?” When not concerned with prison procedures or politics outside (or filled with cricket gibberish), this is about the author’s persecution. It’s prefaced, naturally, by Ernest William Henley’s “Invictus.” Archer may indeed be captain of his soul, but mastery of his fate, for a bit, was at the command of one Mr. Justice Potts.

Be on notice: Archer is a known recidivist. He will write again.