Disgraced peer Jeffrey Archer is promoting his latest novel from jail, it has emerged.

The former Tory Party chairman gave an interview to USA Today from the Hollesley Bay open prison in Suffolk after the newspaper passed a list of questions on to him via his agent.

Sons of Fortune, his 11th novel, is already on best-seller lists in Britain and the United States after being published last month.

Archer, who has a home in Cambridgeshire, told the newspaper that he has no computer access in prison and handwrites everything.

Gym work-outs

He provides his fellow inmates, who call him Jeffrey, with advice on literary and political matters rather than offering them legal help.

He said he works out at the prison gym twice a week and talks to his wife Mary "every day".

But he responded to most of the questions about life in jail by urging people to read his controversial book, A Prison Diary, which is not due out in the US until August.

Archer, who was sentenced to four years for perjury in 2001, admitted breaching strict prison guidelines by identifying other inmates and their crimes in the book.