When I heard somebody commented a couple of years ago that it was 'very well-written', I thought 'well, naturally, you have read all of his books'. I had not followed Lord Jeffery Archer's case fully; but it was so high profile that it was unlikely for anyone to be able to miss it if you were living in the UK at that time. He seemed to have acted shamelessly and the idea that he would publish a series of books on his prison experience sounded like daylight robbing and downright disgraceful.
I am now down to its second series (of three), and I realised last night that I had been preferring to miss my films on DVDs rather than missing the chapters. Yes, I find it a problem that he has discussed many a time that the judge had not given him a fair summery and sentence, yet never a word has been uttered on his own act of perjury to lead to his public downfall. But if you can put that aside for a while, it is a very powerful document written with great simplicity, clarity, and fluency. So on one hand, I find myself trying to maintain a critical distance from the writer who had instigated his own fall, on the other, I am eager to find out what would happen to him next - surrounded by social outcasts of violent or severe crimes. I now believe that it was not just for his own sanity that he should keep and publish his diary, but also for the greater good of the inmates and the general public alike. It is his duty as a 'lord', public figure, writer, to raise the profile of those many issues that had frustrated so many on both sides of the high wall. For that, well done.
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