Prison diaries could earn Archer another year inside

Details of Jeffrey Archer's life behind bars were revealed yesterday as the disgraced peer faced disciplinary action for an apparent breach of prison rules.

Archer may lose up to a year of remission from his four-year sentence for perjury and perverting the course of justice if the Parole Board finds that he has either profited from the diary or revealed details about fellow inmates.

He also faces censure from the Prison Service, which may add up to 42 days to his sentence and remove privileges depending on the details in the book, A Prison Diary ­ Belmarsh: Hell, which begins serialisation in a newspaper today before it goes on sale on Wednesday.

As part of his "punishment" Archer may be moved to an open prison on the Isle of Sheppey, north Kent, from Lincoln Prison, where his wife Mary visited him yesterday. She said conditions were "appalling" but added her husband was "pleased the book is to be serialised. He feels that what he has to say about drugs, about paedophiles, and about lifers in particular is important and should be debated as soon as possible".

In the first instalment of the serialisation, the issues he addressed included how the showers at Belmarsh prison, in south-east London, failed to compare with the one at his London apartment and how he refused prison food including "potatoes that Oliver Twist would have rejected" preferring instead to drink bottled water and Pringles bought from the £12.50 of his own money that he is allowed to spend every week.

The 70,000-word diary, based on Archer's three weeks at Belmarsh at the start of his sentence last summer, appears in at least one respect to contravene Prison Service rules by naming fellow inmates, including Ronnie Biggs and Jill Dando's killer, Barry George. But a spokesman for the Prison Service said the director general, Martin Narey, would reserve judgment until he read the official version rather than rely on a Sunday newspaper account.The spokesman said: "We are seeking a copy of the book as a matter of urgency to investigate alleged breaches of the rules."

Archer's diaries will also be investigated by the Press Complaints Commission amid claims that a clause prohibiting payment to convicted criminals has been broken in spirit. The Daily Mail has made payment for the serialisation to drug rehabilitation and victim support groups. Richard Charkin, chief executive of Macmillan, Archer's publishers, said he could earn between £200,000 and £300,000 in royalties, but added that his client had received no advance.

In the serialisation, he tells how most of the inmates referred to him as Lord Jeff, and he claims that prison conditions brought him to the brink of attempting suicide. In one passage he writes: "They've also now supplied me with a Bic razor, so I get rid of two days' growth. I consider cutting my throat but the thought of failure and having to return to that awful hospital wing is enough to put anyone off."

He says that on the first day he was strip-searched for drugs and razors under an arc light with a camera following his every move. First he was asked to remove his outer clothes, "probably the most expensive outfit in the place".

He writes: "I have a feeling that in this hellhole, writing may turn out to be my salvation. It will keep me sane."

He also tells of how he feels "bitter for the first time in my life" when reporters shout questions at him while attending his mother's funeral.