Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
I love English cricket, Bristol Rovers and the theatre too much to ever be a tax exile RICH LIFE
activist father. Effectively banned in Putin’s Russia where no company is willing to risk publishing the book, Archer acknowledges the Salisbury poisonings have pricked interest.
Story telling caused Archer problems in his political life, with accusations he gilded achievements, including education, to give himself a leg up from a middle class background in Somerset before striking gold with the likes of Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less.
Snooty literary critics resent his popularity – he has sold more than 275 million books – and a friend of the author claims Archer was a victim of snobbery much of his life.
Was he aware of it? “Oh very conscious of it,” replies Archer.
In the Lords, he adds, grand landed peers inheriting seats and country homes stretching back into the mist of time split between those who treated him as an equal and those who look down their noses. He says: “Snobbery in this country lasted a long time.
“I love watching black and white movies when you see, not only are they better stories than you get now, but the snobbery is unbelievable.
“If you go right back to Pride and Prejudice... there was an aristocracy, upper class, upper middle class, middle class, lower middle class, lower class and working class.
“And you knew which you belonged to and you could only fight to get to the one above. You couldn’t get right to the top.”
Archer’s wife Mary is a constant presence in his conversation despite not being present when I visited the penthouse. She had left earlier for London’s Science Museum which she chairs.
Archer clearly adores the woman who stood by him after his public disgrace.
“She’s absolutely wonderful,” he says. “And I know how fortunate I am.”
The once brash Tory thruster who survived cancer admits he has mellowed with age. “Yes. Everybody thinks so. It’s very sad,” he laughs. “I had an Indian come in the other day... I said ‘listen, you worm’, and he said ‘oh my God, Jeffrey. I remember the days when you called me a pathetic worm. What’s wrong?’.”
The pivotal moment was that 2001 jailing for perjury which led to him campaigning for penal reform as well as producing, in typical Archer style, three bestselling volumes of prison diaries. “I certainly realised how privileged I was, how lucky I was,” he says.
“There was one kid sitting on the end of the bed when I was leaving on the Monday and he said ‘I’d change places with you’. I said ‘wait a minute, I’m 62 years old. You’re 27. You’ve got a deal’. He said ‘No, no, I’m a heroin addict’ and he died two years later. “I see him on the bottom of the bed regularly.”
Archer is vowing to continue writing as long as readers buy his books. “Frightened to stop,” he says. “If the stories dried up I might say ‘I’m 78, what the hell? I’m going to live in Majorca and you can all jump in a lake’.
“But as long as the stories are coming I’m going to go on and on and on.
“If you had a boring job putting wheels on cars for Volkswagen you might feel ‘at 60 I’m very happy to do something else’. But I’ve got a very exciting job which I still enjoy.”
Heads You Win by Jeffrey Archer is published by Pan Macmillan, £20.