Jeffrey Archer

Jeffrey Howard Archer, Baron Archer of Weston-super-Mare (born 15 April 1940) is an English novelist and former politician. He was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Louth (Lincolnshire) from 1969 to 1974, but did not seek re-election after almost going bankrupt. Archer revived his fortunes as a novelist. His novel Kane and Abel remains one of the best-selling books in the world, with an estimated 34 million copies sold worldwide. Overall his books have sold more than 320 million copies worldwide.

Archer returned to politics and was the deputy chairman of the Conservative Party from 1985 to 1986; he resigned after a newspaper accused him of paying money to a prostitute. In 1987, he won a civil case and was awarded large damages because of this claim. He was made a life peer in 1992 and subsequently became the first Conservative candidate to be selected as a candidate for mayor of London. He ended his candidacy in 1999 after it emerged that he had lied in the case in 1987. In 2001, he was sentenced to four years of imprisonment for perjury and perverting the course of justice, ending his active political career. He was released early in 2003. He was two weeks old when his family moved to Somerset, eventually settling in the seaside town of Weston-super-Mare, where Archer spent most of his early life.

His father, William (died 1956), was 64 years old when Jeffrey Archer was born. Early in his career, Archer gave conflicting accounts to the press of his father's supposed, but non-existent, military career.

Wellington School In 1951, Archer won a scholarship to Wellington School in Somerset (not Wellington College in Berkshire, as he was later inclined to claim) after passing the 11-plus. She wrote a weekly column entitled "Over the Teacups", and frequently wrote about Jeffrey, calling him 'Tuppence'. Although Archer enjoyed the local fame this brought him, it caused him to be the victim of bullying while at Wellington School. It has also been alleged Archer provided false statements about three non-existent A-Level passes and a U.S. university degree.

Archer raised money for the charity Oxfam, obtaining the support of The Beatles in a fundraising drive. The band accepted his invitation to visit the Principal's lodge at Brasenose College, where they were photographed with Archer and dons of the college, although they did not play there. The critic Sheridan Morley, then a student at Merton, was present and recalled the occasion:

At the interval I went to the toilet, and there beside me was Ringo Starr. He asked if I knew this Jeffrey Archer bloke. I said everyone in Oxford was trying to work out who he was. Ringo said: "He strikes me as a nice enough fella, but he's the kind of bloke who would bottle your piss and sell it." a medical charity that promoted safe childbirth, before joining the United Nations Association (UNA) as its chief fundraiser. The then chairman of the UNA, Humphry Berkeley, alleged that there were numerous discrepancies in Archer's expense claims while he worked at the UNA.

Around this time, Archer began a career in politics, serving as a Conservative councillor for Havering on the Greater London Council (1967–1970). That same year he opened an art gallery, the Archer Gallery, in Mayfair. The gallery specialised in modern art, including pieces by the sculptor and painter Leon Underwood. The gallery ultimately lost money, however, and Archer sold it two years later.

Member of Parliament At 29, Archer was elected Member of Parliament (MP) for the Lincolnshire constituency of Louth, holding the seat for the Conservative Party in a by-election on 4 December 1969.

Louth constituency had three key areas: Louth, Cleethorpes, and Immingham. During his time as an MP, Archer was a regular at the Immingham Conservative Club in the most working-class part of the constituency. In 1970 he took part in the Kennedy Memorial Test, a running/walking race from Louth to Skegness and back.

In parliament, Archer was on the left of the Conservative Party, rebelling against some of his party's policies. He advocated free TV licences for elderly people and was against museum entrance charges. In 1971, he employed David Mellor to deal with his correspondence. He tipped Mellor to reach the cabinet. In an interview, in February 1999 Archer said, "I hope we don't return to extremes. I'm what you might call centre-right but I've always disliked the right wing as much as I've disliked the left wing."

Financial crisis In 1974, Archer was a casualty of a fraudulent investment scheme involving a Canadian company called Aquablast. The debacle lost him his first fortune and left him almost £500,000 in debt.

While he was a witness in the Aquablast case in Toronto in 1975, Archer was accused of stealing three suits from a department store. Archer denied the accusation for many years, but in the late 1990s he finally acknowledged that he had taken the suits, although he claimed that at the time he had not realised he had left the shop.

Kane and Abel (1979) proved to be his best-selling work, reaching number one on The New York Times bestsellers list. Like most of his early work, it was edited by Richard Cohen, the Olympic fencing gold-medallist.

As well as novels and short stories, Archer has also written three stage plays. The first, Beyond Reasonable Doubt, opened in 1987 and ran at the Queen's Theatre in London's West End for over a year. Archer's next play, Exclusive, opened at the Strand Theatre, London, in September 1989. It was not well received by critics, and closed after a few weeks. His final play, The Accused, opened at the Theatre Royal, Windsor on 26 September 2000, before transferring to the Theatre Royal Haymarket in the West End in December.

In 1988, author Kathleen Burnett accused Archer of plagiarizing a story she had written, and including it in his short-story collection, A Twist in the Tale. Archer denied he had plagiarized the story, claiming he had simply been inspired by the idea.

While Archer's books are commercially successful, critics have been generally unfavorable towards his writing. Journalist Hugo Barnacle, writing for The Independent about The Fourth Estate (1996), thought the novel, while demonstrating that "the editors don't seem to have done any work", was "not wholly unsatisfactory".

Archer has said that he spends considerable time writing and re-writing each book. He goes abroad to write the first draft, working in blocks of two hours at a time, then writes anything up to 17 drafts in total. Since 2010, Archer has written the first draft of each new book at his villa in Mallorca, called "Writer's Block".

In 2011, Archer published the first of seven books in The Clifton Chronicles series, which follow the life of Harry Clifton from his birth in 1920, through to his funeral in 1993. The first novel in the series, Only Time Will Tell, tells the story of Harry from 1920 through to 1940, and was published in the UK on 12 May 2011.

The Short, the Long and the Tall, an illustrated collection of Archer's short stories, was published in November 2020, with watercolor illustrations by artist Paul Cox.

Over My Dead Body was published in October 2021, and is the fourth book in a series of thrillers featuring detective William Warwick. The book was critically acclaimed and became a New York Times bestseller.

In January 2020, it was reported that Archer had sued his former literary agents, Curtis Brown, for £500,000 in unpaid royalties.

During the India Global Forum Awards in 2025, Jeffrey Archer stated that he was working on his final novel. According to Archer, the idea for the book came to him six years earlier, and he believes the story may surpass Kane and Abel, his best-selling novel, which had reached its 134th reprint at the time.

Return to politics

Deputy party chairman Archer's political career revived in the 1980s, and he became a popular speaker among the Conservative grassroots. He was appointed deputy chairman of the Conservative Party by Margaret Thatcher in September 1985. Norman Tebbit, party chairman, had misgivings over the appointment, as did other prominent members of the party, including William Whitelaw and Edward Heath. The case came to court in July 1987. Explaining the payment to Coghlan as the action of a philanthropist rather than that of a guilty man, Archer won the case and was awarded £500,000 damages. Archer stated he would donate the money to charity. However, this case would ultimately result in Archer's final exit from front-line politics some years later. The description the judge (Mr Justice Caulfield) gave of Mrs Archer in his jury instructions included: "Remember Mary Archer in the witness-box. Your vision of her probably will never disappear. Has she elegance? Has she fragrance? Would she have, without the strain of this trial, radiance? How would she appeal? Has she had a happy married life? Has she been able to enjoy, rather than endure, her husband Jeffrey?" The judge then went on to say of Jeffrey Archer: "Is he in need of cold, unloving, rubber-insulated sex in a seedy hotel round about quarter to one on a Tuesday morning after an evening at the Caprice?"

Although the Archers claimed they were a normal, happily married couple, by this time, according to the journalist Adam Raphael, Jeffrey and Mary Archer were living largely separate lives. The editor of the Daily Star, Lloyd Turner, was sacked six weeks after the trial by the paper's owner, Lord Stevens of Ludgate. Adam Raphael soon afterwards found proof that Archer had perjured himself at the trial, but his superiors were unwilling to take the risk of a potentially costly libel case. The News of the World later settled out-of-court with Archer, acknowledging they, too, had libelled him. Archer was made a life peer on 27 July 1992 as Baron Archer of Weston-super-Mare, of Mark in the County of Somerset. Prime Minister John Major recommended him largely because of Archer's role in aid to the Kurds.

Political statements in 1990s In a speech at the 1993 Conservative conference, Archer urged then Home Secretary Michael Howard to "stand and deliver", saying: "Michael, I am sick and tired of being told by old people that they are frightened to open the door, they're frightened to go out at night, frightened to use the parks and byways where their parents and grandparents walked with freedom ... We say to you: stand and deliver!". He then attacked violent films and urged tougher prison conditions to prevent criminals from re-offending. He criticised the role of "do-gooders" and finished off the speech by denouncing the opposition party's law and order policies. This was a time when Archer was actively seeking another front-line political role.

On Question Time on 20 January 1994, Archer said that 18 should be the age of consent for gay sex, as opposed to 21, which it was at the time. Archer, though, was opposed to the age of consent for gay men being 16. Historian David Starkey was on the same edition, and said of Archer: "Englishmen like you enjoy sitting on the fence so much because you enjoy the sensation."

Allegations of insider dealings In January 1994, Mary Archer, then a director of Anglia Television, attended a directors' meeting at which an impending takeover of Anglia Television by MAI, which owned Meridian Broadcasting, was discussed. The following day, Jeffrey Archer bought 50,000 shares in Anglia Television, acting on behalf of a friend, Broosk Saib. Shortly after this, it was announced publicly that Anglia Television would be taken over by MAI. As a result, the shares jumped in value, whereupon Archer sold them on behalf of his friend for a profit of £77,219.

On 21 November 1999, the News of the World published allegations made by Ted Francis, a former friend, that Archer had committed perjury in his 1987 libel case. Archer withdrew his candidature the following day. After the allegations broke, Archer was disowned by his party. Conservative leader William Hague explained: "This is the end of politics for Jeffrey Archer. I will not tolerate such behaviour in my party." On 4 February 2000, Archer was expelled from the party for five years. Ted Francis was charged with perverting the course of justice.

The perjury trial began on 30 May 2001, a month after Monica Coghlan's death in a road traffic collision. Ted Francis claimed that Archer had asked him to provide a false alibi for the night Archer was alleged to have been with Monica Coghlan. Andrina Colquhoun, Archer's former mistress, confirmed that they had been having an affair in the 1980s, thus contradicting the claim that he and Mary Archer had been "happily married" at the time of the trial.

Archer never spoke during the trial, though his wife Mary again gave evidence as she had done during the 1987 trial. On 19 July 2001, Archer was found guilty of perjury and perverting the course of justice at the 1987 trial. He was sentenced to four years' imprisonment by Mr Justice Potts. Francis was found not guilty. Prominent journalists admitted to having accepted Archer's hospitality after he was convicted. Archer's mother had died shortly before he was sentenced and he was released for the day to attend her funeral.

Prison Archer was initially sent to HM Prison Belmarsh, a Category "A" prison, but was moved to HM Prison Wayland, a Category "C" prison in Norfolk, on 9 August 2001. Despite automatically qualifying as a category "D" prisoner, given it was a first conviction and he did not pose a serious risk of harm to the public, his status as such was suspended pending a police investigation into allegations about his Kurdish charity. He was then transferred to HM Prison North Sea Camp, an open prison, in October 2001. From there he was let out to work, briefly, at the Theatre Royal in Lincoln, and allowed occasional home visits.

Media reports claimed he had abused this privilege by attending a lunch with a friend, Education Secretary Gillian Shephard. In September 2002 he was transferred to a Category "B" prison, Lincoln. After three weeks, he was moved to the Category "D" HM Prison Hollesley Bay in Suffolk.

During his imprisonment, Archer was visited by a number of high-profile friends, including actor Donald Sinden and entertainer Barry Humphries.

In October 2002, Archer repaid the Daily Star the £500,000 damages he had received in 1987, as well as legal costs and interest of £1.3 million. That month, he was suspended from Marylebone Cricket Club for seven years.

On 21 July 2003, Archer was released on licence from Hollesley Bay after serving half of his sentence. He remained a peer, there being no legal provision through which his peerage could be removed at the time other than passing a new Act of Parliament. He also retained membership of the House of Lords, which did not then have the power to expel members; however, Archer did not take an active part in parliamentary proceedings until his retirement from the Lords on 4 July 2024. Politically, he was a non-affiliated member of the House of Lords.

Prison diaries While in prison, Archer wrote the three-volume memoir A Prison Diary, with volumes fashioned after Dante's Divine Comedy, and named after the first three prisons in which he was kept. His prison term also served as inspiration for nine of the 12 short stories in the collection Cat O' Nine Tales.

Kurdish aid controversy In July 2001, shortly after Archer was jailed for perjury, Scotland Yard began investigating allegations that millions of pounds had disappeared from his Kurdish charity. In 1991, Archer had claimed to have raised £57,042,000.

Subsequent incidents In 2004, the government of Equatorial Guinea alleged that Archer was one of the financiers of the failed 2004 coup d'état attempt against it, citing bank details and telephone records as evidence. In 2009, Archer said: "I am completely relaxed about it. Mr Mann [Simon Mann, the English mercenary leader of the coup] has made clear that it's nothing to do with me." In 2011, Mann, imprisoned in Equatorial Guinea for his role in leading the failed 2004 coup d'état but released on humanitarian grounds later, told The Daily Telegraph that his forthcoming book, Cry Havoc, would reveal "the financial involvement of a controversial and internationally famous member of the British House of Lords in the plot, backed up by banking records." He claimed documents from the bank accounts in Guernsey of two companies Mann used as vehicles for organising the coup showed a 'J H Archer' paying $135,000 into one of the firms.

Personal life Archer has been married to Mary Weeden since July 1966. She went on to specialise in solar power.

They have two children: William Archer (born 1972), a theatrical producer, and James Archer (born 1974), a financial adviser and businessman.

In 1979, the Archers purchased the Old Vicarage, Grantchester, a house associated with the poet Rupert Brooke. Every summer, they host a lavish garden party in the grounds to celebrate their wedding anniversary. Following the near-bankruptcy of the Aquablast scandal, by the early 1980s, Archer was back in a comfortable financial position and began to hold shepherd's pie and Krug parties for prominent people at his London penthouse, which overlooks the River Thames and the Houses of Parliament.

As a boy, Archer dreamed of being captain of Bristol Rovers. He is still a fan of the club.

Archer in fiction Archer was satirically portrayed as a misunderstood secret agent, saviour of Britain and mankind and "overall thoroughly good chap", by actor Damian Lewis in the BBC drama Jeffrey Archer: The Truth (2002). Scriptwriter Guy Jenkin explained that "my Jeffrey Archer is the man who has frequently saved Britain over the last 30 years. He's beloved of all women he comes across, all men, all dogs—he's a superhero."

In the Amazon series Good Omens, which is based on a novel by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, a reference is made by one of the angels in Aziraphale's bookshop: "Something smells evil." Aziraphale replies, "Oh, that would be the Jeffrey Archer books, I'm afraid."

In the Doctor Who episode "Silence in the Library'", the Doctor mentions that the Library has whole continents of Jeffrey Archer.

Works Archer has published 42 works, which have been translated into 33 languages, with combined sales of more than 275 million copies.

Kane and Abel series Kane and Abel (1979) The Prodigal Daughter (1982) Shall We Tell the President? (1986 - revised edition)

Clifton Chronicles Only Time Will Tell (2011) The Sins of the Father (2012) Best Kept Secret (2013) Be Careful What You Wish For (2014) Mightier Than the Sword (2015) Cometh The Hour (2016) This Was a Man (2016)

William Warwick series Nothing Ventured (2019) Hidden in Plain Sight (2020) Turn a Blind Eye (2021) Over My Dead Body (2021) Next in Line (2022) Traitor's Gate (2023) An Eye for an Eye (2024) End Game (2025)

Other novels Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less (1976) First Among Equals (1984) A Matter of Honour (1986) As the Crow Flies (1991) Honour Among Thieves (1993) The Fourth Estate (1996) The Eleventh Commandment (1998) Sons of Fortune (2002) False Impression (2005) The Gospel According to Judas by Benjamin Iscariot, with Francis J. Moloney (2007) A Prisoner of Birth (2008) Paths of Glory (2009) Heads You Win (2018)

Short stories/collections A Quiver Full of Arrows (including "Old Love") (1980) A Twist in the Tale (1988) Fools, Knaves, and Heroes: Great Political Short Stories Editor, Introduction. (1991) Twelve Red Herrings (1994) The Collected Short Stories (1997) Collects A Quiver Full of Arrows, A Twist in the Tale and Twelve Red Herrings To Cut a Long Story Short (2000) Cat O'Nine Tales (2006) And Thereby Hangs a Tale (2010) The New Collected Short Stories (2011) Collects To Cut a Long Story Short, Cat O'Nine Tales, and And Thereby Hangs a Tale The Jeffrey Archer Short Story Challenge Collection Editor, Contributor (Unique) (2013) Four Warned (Quick Reads, 2014) Four shorts stories, all previously published (in Twelve Red Herrings, Cat O'Nine Tales and And Thereby Hangs a Tale) It Can't Be October Already (2017) Single short story (included in Cat O'Nine Tales) Tell Tale (2017) The Short, the Long and the Tall (2020)

Plays Beyond Reasonable Doubt (1987) Exclusive (1989) The Accused (2000)

Prison diaries (non-fiction) 1. Hell — Belmarsh (2002) 2. Purgatory — Wayland (2003) 3. Heaven — North Sea Camp (2004)

For children By Royal Appointment (1980) Willy Visits the Square World (1980) Willy and the Killer Kipper (1981) The First Miracle (1994)