Jeffrey Archer's Superhuman Reading Skills!

[evilsprout]

From the Guardian...

Prisoner FF8282 takes a characteristically modest bow today in disclosing his unrivalled new role as the literary Speedy Gonzales of Her Majesty's penal system.
Not merely did Jeffrey Archer pen and send to a publisher a 70,000-word prison diary in his first three weeks captivity. He discloses in today's Guardian Review that he later went on to read 16 novels and plays - plus uncounted volumes of short stories by five writers - in only 67 days.

Writing in the Review's Christmas Books recommendations to readers, Lord Archer recommends more than five times as many of his fellow authors - including Shakespeare - as any other contributor.

So impressed was John Sutherland, professor of English at University College London, that he offered yesterday to go to Hollesley Bay open prison in Suffolk, where Lord Archer now is, to test him on his knowledge of the works.

Lord Archer, who is in jail for perjury, wrote that the 506 days he had so far spent locked up in five prisons had "allowed me a great deal of time to read".

In his 67 days at Wayland prison, Norfolk, he read nine Shakespeare plays which he does not name; three Dickens novels including the 1,072-page Bleak House; novels by Hermann Hesse, Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh, including the 768-page Sword of Honour trilogy; and short story collections by HE Bates, O Henry, Saki, Somerset Maugham and John Mortimer.

Of Mortimer, he adds: "I was left in no doubt that Rumpole would have got me off."

Later, at the "far more relaxed" North Sea Camp, he read contemporary books by Robert Goddard, Maev Binchy, Frederick Forsyth and Pamela Stephenson, plus the 512- page The Art Book: A Visual Dictionary. He commends the pocket version of this as a stocking filler.

Prof Sutherland asked: "When did he find time to empty his slop pail? It's fairly heroic going. It's quite interesting - why does he give so many hostages to the calculator?

"It's almost as if he was trying to get into the Guinness Book of Records.

"I wonder whether he would be prepared to present himself for a viva voce examination on the books. I am not a prison visitor, but I volunteer myself to go to the prison and decide whether he is is 'cum laude' [in third place], 'magna cum laude' [second], or 'summa cum laude [top]'. I am sure he would be one of these.

"I look forward to describing this experience to Guardian readers."

BUT! Surely if his first three weeks were spend writing all those words a typical entry would be "got up, wrote loads of words, went to bed"?

 

[stu neville]

He's good value, isn't he?

Anyone else catch "Jeffrey Archer: the Truth, the Whole Truth and Everything but the Truth" last weekend?

T'riffic stuff

 

[Anonymous]

Typing jeffrey archer walter mitty in google throws up a significant number of links...
http://www.observer.co.uk/tories/story/0,10475,811088,00.html
is one of many. He seems to have made a lot of enemies in the media, even for a tory!

Though I think Walter Mitty was a fair bit more endearing than this chancer.

 

[Anonymous]

it seems he just cant help lieing,,,, all the time!... let hope he gets a whole lot more time to read, soon please.....

 

[Ermintruder]

I find it rather disturbing to see that Jeffrey Archer is currently enjoying a late life career change as an auctioneer for Sotheby's (he is playing a leading part in an episode of a Sky Arts series called 'Auction').

I must've slipped into an alternative reality...how on earth has he reverted to being a Lord??? The last I heard of him, back in the 2000s, he was a prisoner, stripped of title & privilege. Now he's reborn, at the peak of society, well-heeled and restored with the trappings of respectability.

No more £57m allegedly raised via charity for the Kurds, of which they allegedly received £250k.

Certain aspects of what we call society are rotten to beyond the core (I maintain the strong probability that plenty of his real life is as much a fabricated fiction as his writing, but, it is all still a disgraceful obscenity).

For shame, Lord Archer....

 

[PeteS]

I find it rather disturbing to see that Jeffrey Archer is currently enjoying a late life career change as an auctioneer for Sotheby's (he is playing a leading part in an episode of a Sky Arts series called 'Auction').

I must've slipped into an alternative reality...how on earth has he reverted to being a Lord??? The last I heard of him, back in the 2000s, he was a prisoner, stripped of title & privilege. Now he's reborn, at the peak of society, well-heeled and restored with the trappings of respectability.

No more £57m allegedly raised via charity for the Kurds, of which they allegedly received £250k.

Certain aspects of what we call society are rotten to beyond the core (I maintain the strong probability that plenty of his real life is as much a fabricated fiction as his writing, but, it is all still a disgraceful obscenity).

For shame, Lord Archer....

It always astonishes me (and yes I know it shouldn't anymore) that institutions like Sotheby's want to associate themselves with these characters. Maybe they think that the public has a short memory. Yes I know rehabilitation blah blah blah - but personally I wouldn't trust the guy with an empty cardboard box. Rant over - back to my muesli...

 

[Graylien]

It's the old boy's network, isn't it?

 

[Ermintruder]

It's the old boy's network, isn't it?

Well, I would've thought that just as being a (tenuous) Oxbridge alumnus opens quite a few doors, having been a graduate of Her Majesty's Prisons might've closed at least some. But apparently not.

He is still classed (pun intended) as being 'one of Us' (well, perhaps, them, the high-caste elite that are above all of the conventional strictures that affect the prolitariate). It's like having a protected no-claims discount on your life, as opposed to just on your motor insurance.

I am not some anarchic revolutionary, but I cannot help but thinking (having heard Lord Neil Kinnock and Dame Shirley Williams on the radio this morning) that today's political radical does tend to become tomorrow's pensioned retainer.

And political fringemen, such as Archer, Owen, Boris, Brown.....if they're not alread Lorded, they will undoubtedly become so, one of these days. Including Tony Bliar. It is effectively just a working men's club, with expenses, for those that've been politicians for more than a few years....whatever that weasel "P" word may actually mean.