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“... indeed she was at times portrayed as even more cynical and snobbish than he was. Somewhat in the Jeffrey Archer mode, Clark plays the naughty boy, and turns his wife into a parent – strict but merciful, the custodian of his best self. Since Clark’s death last year, his widow has paid tribute to his sensitive prowess as an adulterer. He caused her ...”

“... electric with civilisations: a thousand or so cultures advanced to the standard of Einstein or Jeffrey Archer in this galaxy alone. So where are they all? When John Logie Baird invented television, he also invented a microwave messaging system broadcast through interstellar space. For forty years, programmes like I Love Lucy and Rawhide and Dynasty ...”

“... yawning fringes of Sunday evening. Last December, for example, a flimsy drama about the career of Jeffrey Archer meant that that week’s Panorama, a stern and thorough examination of the recent suspicious deaths of soldiers at Deepcut barracks in Surrey, ended uncomfortably close to midnight. Satire rather than investigative journalism, the message ...”

“... If the event remains memorable, it’s thanks largely to the Conservative candidate, Lord Archer, who betrayed no inkling of the perjury charges that would soon ditch his campaign and carry him off to jail. Instead, the irrepressible huckster proposed to take advantage of London’s recently introduced system of ‘red routes’ by establishing a new ...”

“... and Peter Lilley and a strange breed of suburban Brylcreem boys – John Moore, Kenneth Baker, Jeffrey Archer and, pre-eminently, Cecil Parkinson. What they have in common is a dreadful smarminess, a smoothly blatant insincerity which apparently nothing can puncture – Baker’s own recent memoirs are one long purr of bland self-satisfaction.* It is ...”

“... He responded by convening in Whitehall a gathering of ‘eminent authors’, attended by William Archer, J.M. Barrie, Arnold Bennett, A.C. Benson, Hugh Benson, Laurence Binyon, Robert Bridges, Hall Caine, G.K. Chesterton, Arthur Conan Doyle, John Galsworthy, Thomas Hardy, Maurice Hewlett, Anthony Hope, W.J. Locke, E.V. Lucas, J.W. Mackail, John ...”

“... that the poem is beautiful. Not many critics imagine that beauty is in the poem in the sense that Jeffrey Archer is in jail. That there can be no beauty or envy or agony without an interpreter doesn’t mean that to describe a poem is to describe the interpreter. There can be no bank robberies without interpreters either, but it would be a poor sort of ...”

“... might have thought, but what made this information so startling was the air of extravagance. As Jeffrey Archer might say, it was a problem of presentation. In theatrical parlance, the show was overbilled. The format promoted more expectations than the content could fulfil. Printed on double-coated paper perfect-bound between card covers, excellent ...”

“... Woolwich. Short-term prisoners have included two members of Thatcher’s circle, the perjurers Jeffrey Archer and Jonathan Aitken. In those days, perjury was considered a crime and not a political necessity. Aitken found religion. After less than a month in Belmarsh, Archer had gathered sufficient material for the ...”

“... undetected, unrealised.In a book that has cameo appearances from Rolf Harris, Charles Manson and Jeffrey Archer, the only occasions on which Brown’s equanimity is disturbed involve Yoko Ono. He is exasperated by her even before she enters Beatles time, and has equally little time for today’s now rehabilitated and (mostly) revered figure. There’s ...”

“... wind that ruffles the lavender (and makes landing for the hornets tricky). 1 August. A propos Jeffrey Archer. I am rereading the Lyttelton Hart-Davis Letters and come across this remark by George Lyttelton: ‘Sprinters always try to beat the pistol, therefore are essentially unscrupulous and unreliable.’ 30 August. A commercial for Carte D’Or ...”

“... sweetheart deals. The Mail, along with the London Evening Standard, which had combined its anti-Jeffrey Archer campaign with a series of squibs aimed in the direction of the Dome (Tory revenants both), were offered the contract to market the Millennium Dome news-sheets. Associated Newspapers will produce a four-page Dome supplement which will be ...”

“... takeover bid by MAI plc, the owners of Meridian TV, but before the deal had been made public. Mary Archer, the wife of the Conservative peer Lord Archer, was a non-executive director of Anglia and had been present at board meetings at which the takeover had been discussed. In a statement, the DTI confirmed that inspectors ...”

“... of the Times lead. The picture of Kingsley Amis seemed shrewdly chosen to forestall the ‘Lord Archer wins the lottery’, ‘lucky Stephen King’, or ‘not more cash for Martin’ reactions. Conservative values and Good English (virtues that Sir Kingsley and the Times share) would be the prime beneficiaries of the shattered book agreement. Inside, the ...”

“... of the Haven to our left. On the far side a cluster of white lights marked North Sea Camp, where Jeffrey Archer served his sentence for perjury.Cross is fifty, a big, gently spoken man with a young dog. He loves the marsh. ‘I’ve not come so much this year, because my mum, as you know, my mum passed away. She’s had cancer and that, so she just ...”