The Doctor’s dilemma

With this book, character assassination reaches a level not known since William Shake-speare did the business with the Macbeths, another family with political interests. First there was Michael Crick with Jeffrey Archer, Stranger than Fiction. Now there is Crick’s ex-wife Margaret with Mary Archer. I see from the blurb that there is a daughter, who presumably even now is amassing files on William and James Archer. For the Cricks, nemesis has become a cottage industry.

Lady — no, Doctor — Archer (‘call yourself “Lady” and they think you haven’t got your O levels’) did her best to stop the book being written. Photographers were asked not to let their pictures be used, friends were instructed not to speak. Michael Grade, an innocent, asked if the Archers had authorised the book, and, on being told they hadn’t, refused to answer questions about parties at their house. A strange man rang Margaret Crick to deflect her by offering her large sums to write about football, about which she knows nothing.