1595

Hell

General

Subtitle:
Author: Archer, Jeffrey
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Binding: Paperback
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Publishing

Publisher: Pan Books
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Publication Year: 2003-07-24
ISBN#: 978-0-330-41859-1
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Pages: 272
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Language: English

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Series: A Prison Diary (1)
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Comments

DAY 5 MONDAY 23 JULY 2001 5.53AM

The sun is shining through the bars of my window on what must be a glorious summer day. I've been incarcerated in a cell five paces by three for twelve and a half hours, and will not be let out again until midday; eighteen and a half hours of solitary confinement. There is a child of seventeen in the cell below me who has been charged with shoplifting – his first offence, not even convicted – and he is being locked up for eighteen and a half hours, unable to speak to anyone. This is Great Britain in the twenty-first century, not Turkey, not Nigeria, not Kosovo, but Britain.

On Thursday 19 July 2001, after a perjury trial lasting seven weeks, Jeffrey Archer was sentenced to four years in jail. He was to spend the first twenty-two days and fourteen hours in HMP Belmarsh, a double A-Category high-security prison in South London, which houses some of Britain ‘s most violent criminals. This is the author's daily record of the time he spent there.