Like most things in Jeffrey Archer's life, his Dubai trip deviated considerably from the predetermined script.
Instead of a heartwarming day spent basking in the adulation of fans, signing copies and cutting ribbons to inaugurate the Borders bookshop at Dubai's Mall of the Emirates, the flamboyant ex-politician found himself surrounded by a parliament of hacks, answering questions about everything from his political career to the future of the novel.
To his credit, the 66-year-old author was unflappable as always. Despite the savaging by the media in his native Britain, Archer was supremely self-confident and very charming in his interactions here. When the queries got uncomfortable, he lobbed them off with opacity or irrelevance, but was always courteous.
Scandal has dogged Archer throughout his career and he has always emerged even more successful after each misfortune.
He became one of the youngest members of the British Parliament when he was elected at the age of 29 to represent Louth.
A promising political career was nipped by his involvement in a fraudulent Canadian company called Aquablast, which subsequently went belly up. Left with debts of almost £428,000 (about Dh2.9 million) and on the verge of bankruptcy ("I was never declared bankrupt" he corrects), he resigned from the House of Commons. He was 34.
To solve his financial woes, he sat down and wrote his first paperback, Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less.
It became a bestseller, and Archer's career as an author was born. Another bestseller followed in its wake: Shall We Tell the President?, followed by the blockbuster Kane and Abel. It became a No. 1 bestseller in hardcover and paperback all over the world.
In 1987, he sued the Daily Star for libel after the paper alleged he had had relations with a prostitute named Monica Coghlan in September 1986.
He won and was awarded £500,000 (about Dh3.4 million) in damages.
Archer was made a Life Peer in the Queen's Birthday Honours List of 1992.
He rekindled his political career, running a successful campaign for Mayor of London and getting selected as the Tory candidate in October 1999.
But in November that year, he withdrew his candidacy, charged with perjury and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice in the 1987 trial.
He was sentenced to four years' imprisonment and was released in July 2003, having served two years.
The three volumes of his Prison Diary; Volume I, an account of his first three weeks in the high security prison, Belmarsh; Volume II, set in Wayland, a C category prison; and the third and final volume about his final transfer to an open prison. But the prison term hardly dented his popularity as an author. Readers have stayed loyal and he has been just as dedicated to his craft.
One of the most successful commercial fiction authors ever, Archer's books are published in 63 countries and in more than 32 languages, with international sales passing 125 million copies.
He is giving back to society as an amateur auctioneer, having raised more than £10 million (about Dh6.9 million) in the past decade.
Archer first came to Dubai to give a talk a decade ago and was here last year with his wife, Dr Mary Archer, on board the QE2.
This time, it was Dubai's cranes that made a fair impression on him. "I have never seen more cranes in my life," he says.
"There were more cranes when I came out of the airport than there were in Sydney before the Olympics, and certainly many more than in London."
I
I handwrite all my books, every word, so I am considerably out of touch with modern technology.
Then I give my handwritten work to my secretary who types it up on the latest machinery and I battle away.
I can't type, I can just about switch a light on. My ability with anything mechanical is almost zero. I still really enjoy hand writing, I get the whole pleasure of writing when I do it in longhand.
I have dared to do my website; it's three months old and it takes me six months to call it up on the screen. I do understand how it's done, because my secretary kindly explains it to me.
I now blog every two days, so when I get home I will be describing our interaction. People who read my blog are fascinated – they want detailed descriptions about everything.
I am not cynical about politics. I am, by nature, an enthusiast; someone who gives others the benefit of the doubt. It has harmed me over the years and it has done me a lot of good. Because I have an immense group of loyal friends, I'd rather go through life a naïve enthusiast than a cynic.
I always liked telling tales. I was always a raconteur. What surprised me was that people would pay me vast sums of money for it.
The things I get most pleasure out of at the moment are writing and doing charity auctions.
In fact I am flying to Australia soon to do one for 'Freddie' [Andrew] Flintoff and Shane Warne to raise money for a hospital.
I have done three auctions for Freddie; the last one raised £220,000 (about Dh1,540,000), from which his nominated charities, Kirsty's Appeal, The Lord's Taverners, Leukaemia Research and CHASE – the Ben Hollioake Fund, all benefited.
Last year I raised £2.2 (about Dh15.4) million through charity auctioneering and I get a great kick out of it.
Over half my life is spent writing, the charity auctions take up the remainder. I have just been asked to do a television show and I am thinking about it.
If you want to do something, do it. I think energy is God-given. It's not something you can learn from a book or imbibe by training.
Me
Me and my early years:
I was born in London but lived in the west country of England with my mother, [Lola], in the little town of Weston-super-Mare, Somerset.
My father, [William], was a printer. My mother was a writer who wrote for the local paper.
Hence, I was introduced to writing as a serious profession at a very early age. She used to tell me stories or read aloud to me and I would tell her some stories too. I would give her suggestions on changing the end or altering the plot. I couldn't stop myself from twisting the stories. While watching films, I imagine completely different endings to the story.
I was a very energetic and determined student. Quite successful, not very successful.
I was educated at Wellington School and Brasenose College, Oxford, where I met my wife, Mary.
I also did a lot of running there, got an athletics blue, and was president of the Oxford University Athletics Club.
I was later chosen to run for Great Britain. I was never really a good athlete, although I did try very hard. I ran the 100 yards in 9.6 seconds for Great Britain in 1966, the year that Mary and I were married.
My athletics career started at school, where I won everything and represented Great Britain as a schoolboy. What Oxford does for you is that it broadens your horizons. For some people, though, it narrows their worldview. They think the world is Oxford. So when you do go into the real world, you should broaden your horizons again.
By the time I left Oxford I was more mature as a person. I had the privilege of mixing with and getting to know a group of people who would influence me for the rest of my life. There are
20-30 people from those days who are still my friends. The main two speeches at our 40th anniversary party were made by people whom we knew from our Oxford days.
Me and my years in prison:
Everybody has disappointments. Nobody achieves what they want to do. I would have liked to have been the Mayor of London, but I wasn't.
The most memorable encounter I had in prison was with my 24-year-old cellmate who said he'd swap places with me. He was a [drug] addict with nothing to look forward to. He said, 'You've got 20 years more of your life left, you have a family, I have nothing.' He died three years later.
My years in prison made me more aware of other people's problems. I know how lucky I am … how lucky and how privileged. In my latest book Cat o' Nine Tails, nine of the stories come from actual stories I heard in prison.
I wrote about a hundred stories when I was in prison. Some of them are composites of three people telling me stories, and me putting it together. And only one of them – the man who robbed his own post office – is a true factual account of what happened to the man and wife from the beginning of their lives to when he went to jail. I changed the details that could identify them at their request.
Another story, It Can't Be October Already, was told to me by a man who is no longer alive, so I cannot say how much is true, and how much I remember. I think it's the most tragic story in the book. I saw it happen in front of my eyes.
I wrote down the things he was saying at the time. He was an Irishman who was far brighter than I was; certainly far better read: he did something I always wanted to do: finish Ulysses. He had read it three times, while I gave up.
He was terrific company, he was very bright, but badly wanted to be in prison during winter. He was quite happy running the streets in summer. So he always committed a crime before winter, that was guaranteed to put him into prison for the next three months. He had the system down pat.
Did I lose credibility with my readers after being in prison? Well, False Impressions, the first book I wrote after getting out, was No. 1 in 17 countries and it sold more books than the one before – that's the honest answer to that question. The readers have remained very loyal.
Me and my writing:
I follow my writing process religiously. You have to be very disciplined and you have to follow the process. The easy thing is to not do it.
Each person should follow a process that suits them, but follow it consistently and disciplined without making excuses for not doing it.
My wife, for instance, likes writing at night. I find I am most productive in the morning. Some people like to write in three-hour spurts, others in one hour.
I usually go abroad to write to eliminate any distractions. I work in two-hour blocks – and I have a huge hourglass, which was a present from Mary, on my desk to ensure that I work for the full two hours.
I write from 6 am to 8 am, then break for two hours for breakfast and to read the morning newspapers, or catch up on the cricket scores around the world, Then from 10 am until noon, when I break to go to the gym or for a long walk before a light lunch.
Back to work at 2 pm until 4 pm, after which I might relax by watching TV, and then my final session is from 6 pm to 8 pm.
I enjoy writing both novels and short stories.
With a novel, you haven't got a clue where you're going – you look up there and you pray. With a short story, you have to know the end.
It's only 3,000-5,000 words, not much in between. You begin and you know what the last line is going to be.
The long novel, the Kane and Abel type of story, is [the] most demanding genre of all. As the Crow Flies took the most out of me.
It was published in June 1992, a saga that opens in the east end of London at the turn of the century and follows the career of Charlie Trumper, who starts life as a coster-monger.
Trumper returns to the Whitechapel Road 70 years later, having only travelled a distance of five miles in his life.
My wife thinks it's the best thing I ever wrote, but it exhausted me physically. By the end of two years, I was a wreck.
I normally spend a year doing research, followed by a year of writing.
I follow that schedule above, and it normally takes me about six weeks to produce a first draft. I then take a four-week break and get away from it.
I come back and do another draft. That takes another four weeks and I handwrite the whole thing out again. The last book took 17 drafts and just over 1,000 hours.
As a writer, I am just as ambitious today as I was when I started writing Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less to become financially solvent.
I just as badly want the new book to go to No. 1, to become as big a bestseller as the previous one. When that stops, I'll stop.
My next effort, A Prisoner of Birth, will be a Kane and Abel type novel. I've also just finished the screenplay for False Impressions.
I don't want to write my autobiography. In a way, the three volumes of Prison Diary are quite autobiographical. And I know what my next three novels are. I have already finished the outline of the new novel, I go away to write it in January. I have just signed a contract for three new novels, I am committed until 2012.
When I write a book, I usually know the first four or five chapters in detail, and the next 10 in outline, which will take me to the middle of the book.
Then it's time to pray. As I write, I'm wondering what will happen on the next page.
My theory is: if I wonder what will happen on the next page, there's a good chance you'll wonder what's going to happen on the next page, as well.
If you know exactly what's going to happen two chapters down the line, you'll give it away. If you don't know, you can't give it away.
Myself
What are the biggest hurdles that writers today face?
The figures from Doubleday reveal that established authors are doing better than ever, but newer authors are finding it hard to get readers. It's harder to get published.
My first book was turned down by 17 publishers. So if you are writing a novel, you just have to grit your teeth and go on. People do break through, of course. But it's less common than it was.
Readership figures differ from country to country.
My figures haven't been affected, but a lot fewer people are reading as they have many more outlets.
The figures brought out by Amazon.com last year were very revealing: they said the top 20 authors in the world were doing as well or better than they had ever done before, but the lesser authors were finding it hard to sell books.
They put that down to the internet, and the many forms of entertainment now available.
In your life, has all the good always come out of bad experiences?
I think it's been half and half. I think the advantage of negative things is that you have to think again and start again.
I feel sorry sometimes for people who get themselves into a job and they have a family to support, a mortgage to pay off and they are stuck.
They would like to play the violin or sing songs, but it's almost impossible to do so. Because by the time they get to [being] middle age, they take with them the baggage of having to fulfil certain obligations.
If I said to you today, 'You are sacked, you are finished, put away that pen and paper and get out,' you will start something else tomorrow. And you might find that something else more interesting.
Having the courage to actually say 'I sack myself' and walk out is very, very hard. I have been lucky in the sense that the turning points came, and I took advantage of them.
Leaving the House of Commons was one of the biggest turning points of my life. I was a young man, I was looking forward to a career in politics and to suddenly have to give that away and start writing … yes, that was by far the biggest.
How much of your plots and characters are based on real-life material?
That dividing line between real life and fiction is quite hard to note.
I wrote a story about a Greek in my latest book, that was once told to me on a yacht near Athens.
After he read the story, my friend said it bore no resemblance to the story he had narrated, other than the germ of an idea.
If someone gives me a short story, I might write down two sentences about it then sit down and think about it for a year.
Yes, I used his vineyard and his yacht as in the story, but he said the story had greatly changed from the original. The idea was still there, the tragic ending was still there, but the rest of it was a storyteller making it up.
Authors are always looking for something, they remember individual things.
If you were writing about this place and looked up a guidebook, without having visited here, you wouldn't get that lovely touch of the cranes.
The Dubai scene might only be two pages, but everybody from this area who reads those two pages will say, he's been here, that description hasn't come out of a guidebook.
The idea for False Impressions came from a New York Times report.
The NY police listed everybody who was missing, presumed dead, on 9/11. But several of them went missing for various reasons, for crime or money.
I had my protagonist escape from the 57th floor and reach home. She has just been sacked by her boss, because she finds out he is planning to steal millions.
So she wakes up the next morning and discovers she has been listed as missing, presumed dead. She has a 48-hour lead, and the story is about what happens when he finds out she isn't dead.
Every author, if they are honest, writes about something they have known or experienced. While the next novel is not based here, it doesn't stop me from basing a short story.
A character going from London to Australia may decide to stop over in Dubai, for instance. The fatal thing is to write about somewhere you haven't been.
Me and politics
I can't really complain about my political career. The Conservatives were in power from when I was 35 to 52. I got lucky.
Today, there are many friends of mine in the Conservative Party, who have been in Opposition for the last 10 years and maybe – unless they win the next election – will stay in the Opposition for 18 years. That wipes a whole career out.
So I don't think I have regrets in that sense. I was privileged to work with Margaret Thatcher and John Major, both different people with different styles of leadership.
Thatcher had several major achievements. She diluted the power of the trade union movement. She made Britain financially strong, made us respected in the world.
We used to be called the sick man of Europe. No one calls us that any more, that's because of Margaret Thatcher. She sold council houses so people could live in houses they owned. She gave Britain a feeling of self-worth.
I can understand why a lot of young people are not getting into politics. Last week I was giving a talk to a group of young people in London called the KitKat Club. These young women, who had 'made it' [professionally] before the age of 40, not one of them would go into politics or go anywhere near it.
When I was young, that generation, [if you had gone through] a room of 150, you would have found 10 or more who would have wanted to go into politics.
I asked one of the girls, who was the vice-president of her company and doing very well, why she wouldn't consider politics.
She replied that she didn't want to see her rather sad private life on the front page of every paper.
I don't blame the media though. They've got their jobs to do. I don't know what the answer is. I collect cartoons. If you look at the cartoons of Disraeli and Gladstone, the press were savage with them as well. I think it's more intrusive than it's ever been. And it is quite hard to find a positive story.
Reading the papers on the plane coming here, it was just page after page of people's wrongdoings … And then you got on to our cricket team and our football team, and it was worse. I can't remember if it was always like that, perhaps it was.
One of the things about one's life, if it's played out in the press, is that it appears to be stranger than fiction to a lot of people … But it could be your life.
A lot of people go through life with terrible experiences, or happy ones, but they are not played out in the press.
From my experience of listening to other people's stories, there are a lot of people with amazing stories.
My favourite books
The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas.
The 39 Steps, John Buchan.
A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens.
A Diamond As Big As The Ritz, F Scott Fitzgerald.
The Prodigy, Hermann Hess.
Sword of Honour, Evelyn Waugh.
Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck.
They all have one thing in common: not only are they good writers, but great storytellers too. Other favourites are Wisden – A Cricketer's Almanack, any PG Wodehouse and How to be Topp by Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle. For inspiration, while I write my new book of short stories, I'm re-reading [some of the works of] HH Munro.
Me and my wife
I met my wife, Dr Mary Archer, at Oxford. She is far cleverer than I am, she is a brilliant woman. We celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary this year. She is chairman of Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust [incorporating Addenbrooke's and the Rosie Hospitals in Cambridge].
She brings to my life 40 years of not only friendship, but companionship. She has taught me so much. She has influenced me a lot.
A lot of what is in my books is because of her, without her even realising it. Perhaps even without me realising it. We divide our time between our homes in London and Cambridge.
I have two sons, William and James. I don't talk about them a lot because I feel they have a right to their own lives. James is happily married and is in banking. William is a film cameraman.
