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First Among Equals
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Author | Jeffrey Archer |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Political novel |
| Publisher | Simon & Schuster |
| Released | 1984 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback, Paperback) |
| Pages | 415 pp |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-671-50406-1 |
First Among Equals is a 1984 novel by British author Jeffrey Archer, that follows the careers and personal lives of four British politicians (Simon Kerslake, Charles Seymour, Raymond Gould and Andrew Fraser) from 1964 to 1991, each vying to become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Several situations in the novel are drawn from the author's own early political career in the British House of Commons, and the fictional characters interact with actual British politicians of the day, including Winston Churchill, Alec Douglas-Home, Harold Wilson, Edward Heath, Margaret Thatcher, and others, including Gary Hart and Queen Elizabeth II.
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Different characters become Prime Minister in the British and American editions of the book; Archer explained that this was because he found that readers in the two countries were not cheering for the same character to win. The British version also includes a Scottish Member of Parliament that the American version omits, perhaps due to the lack of knowledge that this audience has of more than two (Conservative and Labour) British political parties.
A ten-part miniseries, produced by Granada Television, aired on ITV in 1986. Granada constructed a full-scale replica set of the House of Commons chamber for the production, which for many years formed a central part of their Granada Studios Tour attraction, where visitors could see mock debates being performed on the set by actors. The set was also often used by other television productions wanting to set scenes in the Commons chamber, and in 2002 was purchased by the scriptwriter Paul Abbott so that it could be used in his BBC drama serial State of Play. Abbott, himself a former Granada Television staff writer, bought it personally as the set would otherwise have been destroyed and he feared it would take too long to get the necessary money from the BBC. He currently keeps it in storage in Oxford.
Sequences set in the fictional Northumbrian constituency of Redfern were actually filmed, much closer to Granada studios, in Lancashire at Entwistle railway station and at the Barlow Institute, Edgworth.
- ↑ Abbott, Paul. Audio commentary on the DVD release of State of Play. BBC Worldwide. BBCDVD 1493.
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