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Controversial, successful, and suddenly respected, author Jeffrey Archer tells Nick Walker about friends made in jail, The Beatles, and his God-given gift of story-telling

“So, did you get the twist about the money, and where it actually came from?” Jeffrey Archer is quizzing me about the plot of his new global-smash Prisoner of Birth (and, at the time of writing, Hong Kong’s English-language Number One bestseller).

With his commanding voice, hawks’ eyes, and fiercely wrinkled forehead, British novelist Archer, publishing sensation, ex-con and old-skool rogue, can be an intimidating inquisitor, especially when one of the conditions of interviewing the 67-year-old Comeback Kid is having to first read his latest novel. But once he’s satisfied that I have plowed through Prisoner of Birth, he visibly relaxes, and reclines back commandingly on the sofa in his five-star hotel suite.

Less than an hour after alighting from a 14-hour flight from London’s Heathrow, Jeffrey Archer is on ebullient and combative form. And why shouldn’t he. Prisoner of Birth is leaping off the bookshelves. And a bloody good yarn it is too, as I tell him using these exact words. “I’m getting emails saying this is the best thing I’ve ever done!” he responds with a glint of mischief in his smile.

Had he been tempted to write one more chapter? The novel ends on teasing cliff-hanger. “It would have had to do of course with the second trial. The only way I could end.” Then those penetrating eyes catch me. “You’re just greedy, you just want more!” he says, with a hint of triumph. “Fine by me!”

Captive audience

Much of Prisoner of Birth is set inside prison, a habitat Archer is well qualified to depict. And he’s happy to talk about it.

“Prison gave me insights into human behaviour that I would never have otherwise gained. Not to mention a whole new range of characters I had never come across.” Then his eyes bore into me. “If you went to prison for two years,” he says, “I’m sure it would be an amazing experience for you, I’m sure your attitudes, your writing would change, I don’t see how you could have that and it not affect you, so yes certainly, you could say that prison has had a tremendous affect on me and on my writing.”  

Then he takes an unexpected philosophical tack, and with it a different, humbler, Archer emerges, as he tries to put the ex-con Archer in perspective. “How hard is prison? I’ve got a friend dying from cancer, who’d do two years in jail tomorrow to get out of that, and I’ve got a friend who is going bankrupt at 64, now living with his mother, and he would also spend two years in prison to get out of that.”

Prisoners of birth

Archer’s prison novel features a car mechanic, Danny Cartwright, from the East of London who gets sent down for a murder he’s adamant he didn’t commit. Did Archer meet Danny behind bars?

“Danny is indeed bits and pieces of two or three people. There’s a guy in prison at the moment, Billy, who I’m helping with his education. You’ll find his name and a long list of his academic qualifications at the front of the book. He came into prison barely able to read and write. He’s currently doing a master of arts and he’s aiming to go and do a PhD.

“There’s the sort of lifer who lies on bed all day and does nothing, and there’s lifers like Billy who decides: right, I’m going try and get a PhD, I’m going to move forward with my life. I don’t think he thought that at the beginning, but as time moves on, and it moves slowly in prison. I thought he was very bright. Danny is based on two or three people, Billy being one of them.”  

Reflective

I ask Archer if any of his prison friendships have endured. His face takes on a sentimental expression; he’s glad I asked. “I visit two of them. I visit the one who is being educated, or educating himself I should say, and there’s another man called Fletch who was sent to prison for quite a few years for murdering a pedophile. Fletch himself had been buggered from the age of six to 16 in a boys home and he murdered the pedophile who had buggered him. There for the grace of God go any one of us. It’s a horrific story and he got 22 years for murder. You can’t go around murdering people, but … [long pause] … we’re all prisoners of birth.”

Are there a new book in the works? “Yes there is. But I can’t tell you about it. I haven’t even told my publisher about it yet.” Word is that it’s set in China, I suggest, recalling a recent interview that he did in London.

“Well – set in China? Hmm… accurate but misleading,” he offers.

“Intriguing,” I murmur, and Archer beams a big smile. Intrigue is his business, even if he sails a bit too close to the wind sometimes. “It’s might be called Paths of Glory,” he adds.

Doing time

There’s one last question I wanted to ask him. With British prisons awash with drugs, did prisoner FF 8282, perhaps during his darkest hours, ever smoke or take something illicit to relieve the agonizing tedium of life behind bars?

“The prison drugs scene came as a terrible shock. It made an impression, that’s why I included it. I’ve never touched drugs – you should see what it does to people – I’ve never even smoked!” he thunders. A man of few vices – at least the traditional ones – Archer doesn’t even swear, cannot abide foul language, and took a firm stance against it in prison. 

“I’ve found if you deal with people on a day-to-day basis and you never ever swear, always behave politely, it has an amazing effect. When people understood this they would, after time, learn. And I’d often hear a ‘sorry Jeffrey’ after some swear word came out, and its user noticed I was in the vicinity. Happened often during prison cricket games. Anyway, I wasn’t teasing, I was making a point.”

Fairer deal

He’s on a roll now, emboldened by the recollection of his victory across four-letter-word usage in Her Majesty’s Prisons. “Come on, more questions.” Archer bellows like a guard to a slovenly inmate.

I mentally scan all the newspaper pictures I have of Archer in my head, and then stop at the most curious one, dating from 1963: Jeffrey Archer as the fifth Beatle posing boyishly along side John, Paul, George and Ringo, on a charity drive and holding Oxfam donation tins. I bring this image up, and Archer smiles at a fond memory from yesteryear. 

“They were very generous. It was very good of them to do it. There wasn’t any doubt in my mind that Paul McCartney and John Lennon were very bright. There wasn’t any doubt in my mind that they could have gone to Oxford [University], if that was their course, if they hadn’t been prisoners of birth. Harrison clearly was a wonderful musician. And Ringo, [Archer’s face takes on a quizzical look], I couldn’t get to terms with at all. But it was a great day in my life and great fun.”  

Finally, I have to ask him, are story-tellers born? “Writers are two-a-penny. Storytellers? God-given gift. You can’t teach story-telling. Can’t be done. You can teach people to write, teach the basics. But are story-tellers born?” He answers the question again with Jeffrey Archer-like conviction. “Absolutely.”

Prisoner of Birth is on sale now.