- Joined
- Jul 27, 2001
- Messages
- 1,217
From the Guardian...
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"?
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"?