Jeffrey Archer back on top with a bestseller

Lord Archer has made yet another remarkable comeback by going back to the top of the fiction bestseller lists for the first time in 10 years.

Prisoner of Birth, which draws heavily on the Tory peer's experiences in jail, has beaten John Grisham, Danielle Steele, and Alexander McCall Smith to the coveted number one spot, it will be announced today.

The book, which has been in the shops for only three days, was serialised in The Sunday Telegraph. It is already on its fourth reprint.

The book, which is Lord Archer's 14th novel, is about a man who is wrongly imprisoned for the murder of his best friend.

He is sent to Belmarsh high-security prison in south-east London.

It was the same prison where Lord Archer spent the first three weeks of his two years behind bars after he was convicted of perjury at the Old Bailey in 2001.

The title was based on some of the convicts Lord Archer met in prison where he worked in the library.

The success of the book underlines the resilience of Lord Archer who has bounced back from bankruptcy, which ended his career as an MP in 1974, and scandal which forced his resignation as the Tories candidate for the London mayoralty in 1999.

Lord Archer, whose last book was about the traitor Judas Iscariot, was over the moon to be told he had gone back to the top for the first time since 1998 with the 11th Commandment.