Jeffrey Archer: A Prison Diary (UK 2023)

From the Publisher:
Hell, the first volume in Jeffrey Archer's The Prison Diaries, is the author's daily record of the time he spent there.

The sun is shining through the bars of my window on what must be a glorious summer day. I've been incarcerated in a cell five paces by three for twelve and a half hours, and will not be let out again until midday; eighteen and a half hours of solitary confinement. There is a child of seventeen in the cell below me who has been charged with shoplifting - his first offence, not even convicted - and he is being locked up for eighteen and a half hours, unable to speak to anyone. This is Great Britain in the twenty-first century, not Turkey, not Nigeria, not Kosovo, but Britain.

On Thursday 19 July 2001, after a perjury trial lasting seven weeks, Jeffrey Archer was sentenced to four years in jail. He was to spend the first twenty-two days and fourteen hours in HMP Belmarsh, a double A-Category high-security prison in South London, which houses some of Britain's most violent criminals. This volume recounts his experience while there.

Jeffrey Archer: A Prison Diary. Belmarsh: Hell. Pan Books, ISBN: 9781509808878 (April, 2023), 272 p., £12.50.

Jeffrey Archer: A Prison Diary (USA 2004)

From the Publisher:
On July 19, 2001, following a conviction for perjury, international bestselling author Jeffrey Archer was sentenced to four years in prison. Prisoner FF8282, as Archer is now known, spent the first three weeks in the notorious HMP Belmarsh, a high-security prison in South London, home to murderers, terrorists and some of Britain's most violent criminals.

On the last day of the trial, his mother dies, and the world's press accompany him to the funeral. On returning to prison, he's placed on the lifer's wing, where a cellmate sells his story to the tabloids. Prisoners and guards routinely line up outside his cell to ask for his autograph, to write letters, and to seek advice on their appeals.

For twenty-two days, Archer was locked in a cell with a murderer and a drug baron. He decided to use that time to write an hour-by-hour diary, detailing the worst three weeks of his life.

When A Prison Diary was published in England, it was condemned by the prison authorities, and praised by the critics.

Jeffrey Archer: A Prison Diary. St. Martin's Griffin, ISBN: 0312330847 (July, 2004), 259 p., $14.99.

Jeffrey Archer: A Prison Diary (UK 2003)

From the Publisher:
Hell, the first volume in Jeffrey Archer's The Prison Diaries, is the author's daily record of the time he spent there.

The sun is shining through the bars of my window on what must be a glorious summer day. I've been incarcerated in a cell five paces by three for twelve and a half hours, and will not be let out again until midday; eighteen and a half hours of solitary confinement. There is a child of seventeen in the cell below me who has been charged with shoplifting - his first offence, not even convicted - and he is being locked up for eighteen and a half hours, unable to speak to anyone. This is Great Britain in the twenty-first century, not Turkey, not Nigeria, not Kosovo, but Britain.

On Thursday 19 July 2001, after a perjury trial lasting seven weeks, Jeffrey Archer was sentenced to four years in jail. He was to spend the first twenty-two days and fourteen hours in HMP Belmarsh, a double A-Category high-security prison in South London, which houses some of Britain's most violent criminals.

Jeffrey Archer: A Prison Diary. Belmarsh: Hell. Pan Books, ISBN: 0330418599 (July, 2003), 259 p., £6.99.