Prison Diary part II: Purgatory: by Jeffrey Archer.

Archer was able to buy a beautiful emerald for his very worthy wife as a Christmas gift, even as he was in prison - but if he is able to figure out why he is victimised, and who are the powers really behind it, he is not saying. He is a citizen of UK, and as such won't be able to articulate the truth if he has any suspicions of where it all came from. But it was all clear even as it began, the whole smear campaign that unbelievably blew into this kangaroo court case and the incarceration.

Baroness Nicholson lied about his misdeal with red cross funds for Kurds, not for a frolic without a fear of reprieve but due to perhaps orders from above, perhaps merely a nudge that she was happy to oblige for her own satisfaction. Potts, who knows if he was pressured, blackmailed, or none of the above, merely presented a case of preservation of some authorities higher above in the nation.

Fact is he was and is victimised for being a friend of Diana, the Princess of Wales (one would say late if it were not really that it seems so unreal, even apart from the fact that there won't be another until William is married and PoW), the Queen of Hearts.

He is getting off much lighter at that, compared to Charles Spencer, the brother of Diana - he had his children taken away from him by the divorce that came after death of Diana, and who can say if that was a natural course of events or if Lady Spencer was really persuaded by those that disapproved of Charles telling it like it is and being applauded at the funeral? If she really was persuaded, moreover, who knows how it was done, with threats, or blackmail?

Fact is Charles Spencer is now alone, having lost his family for being the only relative of Diana to be able to defend her, to speak of the beautiful woman with glowing terms unlike the disparagement fashionable in highbrow circles along with a excusing of her being supplanted with a mistress by her husband with a "she was not intellectual enough" (hello, was or is her husband a Nobel prize contender in science? Even a postgraduate degree holder from Oxbridge? A first, perhaps?) - and who knows, perhaps Charles Spencer got off lightly at that, due to his wife leaving her and him losing his family; the option might have been an accident to him, too, in yet another foreign land. Or even right in England.

English history after all is replete with such disposing off of inconvenient persona.