iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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John Self @john-self.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Trying to remember the precise arrangement of details in a piece I read decades ago about how Jeffrey Archer’s agent, or editor, or possibly even wife Mary, helped him with his work by “translating his books into English.”

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Sam Coleridge @samcoleridge.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

now now t&p

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Alison Donovan @grannygermalee.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

No surprises there then… the ‘fragrant’ Mary 😏

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Bill Tinley @btin.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I seem to recall that in the TV series of Kane and Abel there's a ritzy function at which the band is playing a Beatles song that hadn't yet been composed at the time of said function.

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John Self @john-self.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Maybe it was the same source that this passage, from the Times obit of Archer, used, though it puts it (a bit) more diplomatically. www.thetimes.com/uk/obituarie...

This success was no thanks to critical opinion. One review of that first book said that "the writing, especially the dialogue, is bad beyond belief", setting the tone for many later reviews. It was true that, judged by serious standards, Archer's books were lamentable, though those are not the standards by which popular fiction has ever been judged.
His wife helped him to write the first book, and over the years Archer relied on a great deal of assistance from others. His longstanding editor, Richard Cohen, admitted that Archer's manuscripts, with their childish handwriting and semiliterate spelling, needed endless work.
It was also part of Cohen's task to calm Archer's wilder ambitions, telling him that he was not likely to win the Booker prize, or the Nobel. All the same, said Cohen, "his books do convey the sweat and noise of a recognisably real world".
For those not fastidious about prose style they had gripping plots of a kind. The dialogue remained laughably bad, in a way that could never have issued from human lips: "Frank, we have been friends for over 50 years. Equally importantly, as my legal adviser you have proved to be a shrewd advocate."

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