Jeffrey Archer turned life at a bleak open prison into a world of growing freedoms, writing, influence and, apparently, a close relationship with a local woman.
For weeks, I watched North Sea Camp prison, a bleak cluster of low buildings marooned on the flat Lincolnshire landscape, waiting for Jeffrey Archer to emerge. There was little around it but fields, sky and the grey sweep of The Wash, with biting winds rolling in from the North Sea across the exposed land. Boston, with its market square and St Botolph's “Stump” rising above the fenland, felt like the last proper town before the landscape opened out towards the coast. And there, beyond it, was Archer. A world away from the millionaire lifestyle he knew.
Trusted status and an unofficial detour
By the time I arrived, the disgraced peer had been granted trusted status and was allowed out of prison on authorised duties, a remarkable freedom compared with the grim conditions he had endured when the steel doors of Belmarsh first slammed behind him. And when he did leave, Archer appeared to make full use of that freedom.
We had received a tip that, away from the watchful eyes of the jail, he had used his famous charm to grow close to a local woman. On some trips outside, we watched as his journey would include an unofficial detour to her home. It was classic Archer. Even behind bars, he seemed to find room to manoeuvre.
That memory came flooding back yesterday with news that the bestselling novelist and former Tory politician had died aged 86 at his Cambridge home. Because if you wanted to understand Jeffrey Archer, his time in prison told you plenty. He recorded much of it himself.
Prison trilogy and a new regime
His prison trilogy was loosely modelled on Dante's Divine Comedy: Hell was Belmarsh, Purgatory was Wayland, and Heaven was North Sea Camp. The final volume begins on Day 89 of his sentence, Monday, October 15, 2001. Driven towards North Sea Camp, Archer could scarcely believe what he saw. There were “no electric gates, no high walls and no razor wire”.
An officer joked that after Wayland, it would be like Butlins - except Butlins had a wall around it. I understood why the place made such an impression. North Sea Camp felt very different from most people's idea of prison. Its remoteness was part of the security. It sat low and exposed beside The Wash, surrounded by open land, with wind whipping across the fields and little on the horizon.
The regime relied heavily on trust. Archer was shown to a room roughly 20ft by 8ft, large by prison standards, with a window looking towards the bleak Lincolnshire coast. As a Category D prisoner, he was allowed a weekly visit, with further freedoms to come after serving a third of his sentence. Characteristically, one of his early thoughts was what the newspapers would make of his first trip into town.
Rebuilding a normal life
That, too, felt very Archer. Even in prison, he remained acutely aware of how the outside world saw him. North Sea Camp was where Prisoner FF8282 began to rebuild something approaching a normal life. He worked inside the jail, wrote obsessively and listened to the stories of thieves, drug dealers and killers around him. Other inmates became characters, and their experiences became material.
Boredom, Archer said, was one of prison's greatest punishments. His answer was to write. As his sentence progressed, his freedoms grew. He was eventually allowed out to work at Lincoln's Theatre Royal and was permitted occasional home visits. Compared with Belmarsh, where he had been strip-searched and locked alongside serious criminals, North Sea Camp really did seem like heaven.
But his diaries were about more than his own discomfort. Archer became increasingly critical of a prison system he believed could take damaged offenders and return them to society in an even worse state. He wrote about drugs flowing through jails and questioned a regime that mixed relatively minor offenders with hardened criminals.
Pushing boundaries and the fall
What struck me then, and still does, was how quickly he adapted. At Belmarsh, he had been reduced to a number. At North Sea Camp, he had once again built routines, contacts, privileges and a degree of influence. But his willingness to push at the boundaries eventually brought it crashing down.
In September 2002, while temporarily released, Archer attended a gathering at the Norfolk home of former Tory Cabinet minister Gillian Shephard instead of returning directly to prison. He was swiftly removed from North Sea Camp and sent to HMP Lincoln, where the man accustomed to open conditions suddenly found himself locked in a cell for up to 22 hours a day.
And yet, watching him and that bleak prison and waiting for him to emerge, the Archer I saw was still unmistakably Archer - charming, restless and always testing how far the rules might bend. Even on authorised trips beyond the prison, Archer seemed determined to make the most of his freedom.
