Purgatory

by Jeffrey Archer

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312330987
• ISBN13: 9780312330989
• Release Date: July 2004
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Length: 310 Pages
• Weight: 1.37 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

error in my submission

I made an error in making a submission, I have not read the book yet. and kind find where to just delete my review. sorry.

Prison Diary 2

Excellent read.Gives one quite an insight into what happens inside the prison system Loryn Potroz

A charmed life?

As compelling a read as Volume I. He is now in Category C Wayland prison, which, though still full of any number of restraints, is far more relaxed than Belmarsh. Even so there are murderers and some real thugs among the inmates. Against the latter he was protected by two stalwart prisoners without whom he hardly ever went into the exercise area. As in Belmarsh, it is astonishing how much help he got from a number of his more experienced fellow-prisoners: somehow they managed to get him, among other things, far more phone cards than he was entitled to. Even more astonishing is what he could do from prison: a substantial part of this volume is about how a fellow inmate from Colombia, about to be deported back home on his release, helped him to buy direct from an emerald mountain in Colombia an emerald for $10,000 which, if he bought it from a jeweller in London, would have cost him about twice as much: it was to be his Christmas present to Lady Archer. One of the warders seemed to know about it, and simply warned Archer not to transfer the money to the Colombian's outside contact until after until after the latter had been deported. Someone in the prison fed to the press stories of the privileged treatment Archer was receiving. The press did not bother to check them and published and perhaps even made up inaccuracies which were so gross that the inmates who read the stories fortunately knew them to be untrue. But to this reader it seems clear that the charmed (if uncomfortable) life Archer led in prison might have been less charmed had he not been so famous. On the other hand, his own basic charm and good nature (as they appear in these diaries) probably also helped with both inmates and warders. And of course he would have been transferred from Belmarsh to an Open (Category D) Prison if the police had not first had to investigate innuendos (eventually proved to be totally groundless) from a Member of the House of Lords that he had misappropriated funds that had been donated to a charity for the Kurds with which Archer had been associated. (See also my reviews of Vols.I and III)

Easy Read, Insightful

I have to disagree with some of the other reviews. I find this book very easy to read, not boring at all. I could not put it down. I'm no big fan of Jeffrey Archer, but this Second Book does go into more of the dark side of British Jails and Prisons. The drugs, the violence.... the way the inmates stick together, swapping Mar's bars for Phone Cards.. Very good.