Sir Jeffrey Archer

A magical event at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club with Lord Jeffrey Archer – a story teller, a politician, an orator and a phoenix that keeps resurrecting. I first met Mr. Jeffrey Archer at a book-signing event, next to the Prince of Wales Pub, at Sung Hung Kai Centre, Hong Kong in September 1994; and he has hardly changed physically since then. He is just as sprightly and open and vocal.

This time he’d arrived at end of March in Hong Kong soon after his exhaustive travelling, book signing and talks in Canada and the United States.

The latest of his 14 books, A Prisoner of Birth, another prison caper, rose to No.1 and became a bester-seller in 3 days, became also No. 1 in SCMP. The inspiration for his title and the book is based on the convicts he met in prison. A Prisoner of Birth is a story about a man who is wrongly accused for the murder of his best friend and is sent to a high-security prison-Belmarsh in south-east London, the same prison where Lord Archer convicted of perjury in 2001 spent the first three weeks of his two years behind bars.

He guessed many of us assembled there were writers and as such were possibly interested in how and when he writes. When writing he goes to his holiday home in Spain (and this is only for millionaire writers amongst us). The place affords him quiet space for writing, his needs are well met, and not having to cook and clean and look after children affords him the peace he seeks. He wakes at five am, and starts writing at five thirty. He uses a felt tipped pen and writes in batches of two hours with two hour breaks in between. It is not unusual for writer to go through his draft 17 to 20 or more times, he said. He always believed he could not write without absolute silence and mostly manages 100,000 words a year.

But while in prison he wrote a million words. He was constantly bombarded with ear-splitting noise from both sides of his prison room, loud reggae music from boom boxes; and endless swearing. He came up with three volumes named after Dante’s Divine Comedy, Belmarsh: Hell, Wayland: Purgatory, and North Sea Camp: Heaven. All three published to critical acclaim. He said he never swore in prison, and within three months, 95% of the prisoners, maybe more, never swore when they were with him.

He spoke fluidly. Q&A mainly focused on politics of Britain and USA. He answered questions candidly with a huge sense of humour. Questions were good too; nobody made long speeches before asking convoluted questions.

Lord Archer is a great admirer of Blair and Obama. Blair, he said, was one of Britain’s great prime ministers with flair and charisma. He referred to Obama’s speech on race relations and compared it with Lincoln’s on slavery and Kennedy’s on segregation.

One questioner wanted to know if Britain had forgotten Hong Kong. He said Britain had not. Britain was not interfering but giving Hong Kong plenty of leeway and watching it very carefully. He also said he was surprised by the amount of love and respect Hong Kong had for Britain, and especially for our last governor, Chris Patten.

He ended his talk by saying there are many very good writers but for every thousand good writers there is only one story teller. With this he asked to be excused to read a piece of writing. No, he did not read from his book but read an anonymous piece. First author, I have known, who read but not from his book! No self promotion here, none needed.

A Somerset Maugham’s retelling of an old story, anonymous, which appeared as an epigraph to John O’Hara’s book…

Appointment in Samarra

A merchant in Baghdad sends his servant to the marketplace for provisions. Shortly, the servant comes home white and trembling and tells him that in the marketplace he was jostled by a woman, whom he recognized as Death, and she made a threatening gesture. Borrowing the merchant’s horse, he flees at top speed to Samarra, a distance of about 75 miles (125 km), where he believes Death will not find him. The merchant then goes to the marketplace and finds Death, and asks why she made the threatening gesture. She replies, “That was not a threatening gesture, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.”