Saturday 17 November 2018

A Little Touch of Jeffrey in the Night

Just a quick tip-off for connoisseurs of Jeffrey Archer's unique, er, style. Now that his once legendary blog is a shadow of its former self, we must find our little moments of Archer magic where we can. So I strongly recommend the latest edition of A Good Read, which I caught on Radio 4 last night.
 Archer gets off to a solid enough start with his own recommendation (Fred Uhlman's Reunion), becomes more and more assertively obtuse as the programme continues (he does not approve of his fellow guest's choice), issues a terrifying barking laugh somewhere around the 17-minute mark, and really hits his stride with Hariett Gilbert's choice, Penelope Fitzgerald's The Bookshop, which clearly baffles and displeases him. If it were out of print, Archer assures us, he (being a man in a position to do such things) would make no effort to get in reprinted – but he does grudgingly admit in the end that its author is 'a class act'.
  A Good Read is available on the BBC iPlayer.

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