Saturday, February 26, 2011

Critics write Archer's next chapter

On the rebound in his literary career, Lord Jeffrey Archer says he writes for eight hours a day.

Photo / Paul Estcourt
By Andrew Stone, NZ Herald, Saturday Feb 26, 2011

Jeffrey Archer thinks the British press have finally given up skewering him.

Even better, they may have capped their poison pens and admitted that maybe, after 15 novels, a clutch of short stories, three plays and, of course, his prison diaries, Archer can write.

"The last three years," remarks Archer of his critics, "they've been wonderful."
He reels off the approved reviews: "The Washington Post compared me to [French writer Alexandre] Dumas, the Times said 'we must now admit that Kane and Abel is a modern classic'.
"The early books, well I was dismissed as a story teller, but no longer, thank heavens".

The British writer gifted his knockers plenty of shot to spray at him over half a century of public life. His own career could reside in the paragraphs of one of the early novels: politician, charity fundraiser, policeman, soldier, playwright, actor, sprinter, adulterer, chancer, liar, convict.

His written work was routinely trashed and reviewers questioned whether Archer penned the prose, or a spirit of ghostwriters did the work.

Full story at New Zealand Herald. 

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