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HYAM CORNEY:
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First among inmates

Only one thing pleases the Brits more than seeing someone become a success — and that’s seeing him fall. And few people in recent times have enjoyed as much success as Jeffrey Archer or have fallen further and harder.

Archer enjoyed all the advantages of a good British education, including Oxford University, where he made it known that not only did he want to become a politician, he also wanted to become prime minister. And there is little doubt that he would have achieved that latter aim had it not been for a series of errors.

He became an MP when he was only 29 — the youngest person in the House of Commons — but resigned five years later when a company in which he had invested more than ?400,000 went broke, leaving him penniless. But a small matter like that was nothing to Archer, who decided to become a best-selling novelist. Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less, based partly on his own experiences, was but the first of a series of fantastically successful novels which made him a fortune — some 120 million copies have been sold worldwide. Other titles include First Among Equals, A Quiver Full of Arrows and A Matter of Honor.

Back on his financial feet, he was elected deputy chairman of the Conservative Party in 1985, when Margaret Thatcher was in charge, and seemed set for a successful return to public life. But nothing with Archer is that simple — his long-suffering wife, Mary, once said that "life with Jeffrey is never dull" — and a year later he resigned his Tory post over allegations in a tabloid newspaper that he had been caught with a prostitute and had paid her to leave the country.

He denied the charges, sued the newspaper for libel - and won. Six years later, he was back in parliament - this time in the Upper House as Lord Archer. End of his ups and downs? No way. His "friend," who had provided him with an alibi over the prostitute story, admitted that he had not been telling the truth.

Archer was charged with perjury and at the end of a trial at the Old Baile y, was sentenced to four years in jail.

The judge said the charges "represent as serious an offence of perjury as I have had experience of." He served just two years and was released this summer. But never one to miss an opportunity, he kept a diary while in prison, the first volume of which has just been published in America (two more are promised).

THE DIARY covers just his first 21 days in Bellmarsh prison — known to inmates as "Hellmarsh‘ — in Woolwich, a district of London. His day-by-day, sometimes hour-by-hour account of his time there, while waiting to be transferred to the less strict regime of an ’open‘ prison, provides a fascinating and unique insight into the banality and what he describes as the ’senseless routine" of prison life.

Among his fellow prisoners are 32 murderers, and a further 17 "lifers," including drug dealers. Like all of them, Archer is subjected to the humiliation of constant strip-searches, inedible food and the fear that someone is going to attack you. No special privileges for lords or best-selling authors.

But even Archer the writer admits that he cannot convey "the full horror of the time you spend banged up.‘ He has hopes — eventually realized — that he will be transferred to an open prison, but what of the ’lifers‘? He meets many of them, listens to their stories and vows to do something about prison conditions when he is a free man. He notes that there were only one or two Jews in Bellmarsh — ’their family upbringing and sense of community are so strong that they rarely end up in the courts or in prison," he observes.

He describes his first week as "the longest of my life.‘ He finds himself unable to eat the prison food — he adjusts a little as the days go by — and keeps his sanity by writing his diary, reading the hundreds of letters of support he receives, and giving lectures to prisoners on creative writing. As he puts it, he becomes ’anaesthetized."

He also manages to display the occasional bout of humor — as, for example, when he describes the pan-fried fish served for one meal as "having spent more time swimming in oil than in the sea.‘ But there is little to smile about, as he waits to hear whether he is being moved from ’Hellmarsh.‘ When it becomes known that he is to be moved, one of the prisoners appeals to him: ’When you get out of here, be sure to write it as it is. Tell them about the problems both sides are facing, the inmates and the officers, and don’t pull your punches."

Archer pulls no punches. He gives some examples of the seamier side of prison life but these are rare. The bulk of the diaries is concerned more with the humiliations that prisoners have to face — including those who have not yet been sentenced but are merely awaiting trial — and the conditions under which officers have to work.

At several junctures, Archer appeals to the Home Secretary, the cabinet minister responsible for prisons, to take note of what goes on in those institutions.

Now that he has been released, Archer has promised to campaign for prison reform. If those in authority read these diaries, he may not need to do much more campaigning.

— The writer was deputy editor of the Jewish Chronicle of London.