Hell

<p><i>Hell</i> is the haunting first volume in Jeffrey Archer&rsquo;s The Prison Diaries, the author&rsquo;s daily record of the time he spent there.<br><br><i>&lsquo;The sun is shining through the bars of my window on what must be a glorious summer day. I&rsquo;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</i> <i>&ndash; his first offence, not even convicted &ndash; 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.&rsquo;</i><br><br>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&rsquo;s most violent criminals. This volume recounts his experience while there.</p>