Jeffrey Archer: successful novelist, disgraced politician and convicted liar

As many have observed, Jeffrey Archer, who has died aged 86, led a life as colourful as the plot in one of his novels.

He was, at one time or other, a senior Conservative politician, a best-selling author, a peer of the realm, and a convicted perjurer.

Possessed of huge drive, vast wealth and immense personal charm, Archer bounced back from disaster and, more than once, rebuilt a shattered life.

But for all his talents, he will be remembered as a man affected by a defective moral compass, whose public humiliation was entirely self-inflicted.

Jeffrey Howard Archer was born in north London on 15 April 1940.

Within two weeks, his parents moved to Weston-super-Mare in Somerset, where they bought a house from John Cleese's mother.

Archer's mother Lola was the first woman journalist on the weekly paper, the Weston Mercury.

In later life, Archer insisted that his father William, who was some 40 years older than his mother, was a decorated hero of the First World War.

In fact, he was a convicted fraudster who, according to a US newspaper, spent the war years conning people in New York.

In 1951, the young Archer went to Wellington School on the edge of Exmoor.

Some people mistakenly assumed he had gone to the somewhat more prestigious Wellington College in Berkshire, and he did little to correct them.

Archer's academic career was undistinguished, and he left school with three O-levels. He did, however, embark on a fitness regime designed to improve his physique after his originally skinny frame led to taunts from fellow pupils.

After school, he drifted. There was a brief spell in the army and then a short course in physical education in America.

On his return, he spent five months as a probationary constable in the Metropolitan Police, before quitting to become a physical training instructor at a small prep school in Hampshire.

It was while holding a similar job at Dover College that his resume moved into the realms of fantasy.

He styled himself Jeffrey Archer, FIFPC, BSc, leading people to assume he had obtained a degree during his time in the United States.

In fact, as his unofficial biographer Michael Crick later discovered, Archer's alma mater in the States was, in fact, a bodybuilding club.

However, Dover College was so impressed, it backed Archer's bid to go to Oxford as a mature student to do a one-year Diploma of Education course.

At Oxford, he excelled in athletics, winning a Blue, although it was doubtful whether his course qualified him to be a bona fide member of the University.

More importantly, it brought him into contact with fellow students who would go on to hold senior positions in politics, finance and the media.

He also married Mary Weeden, a chemistry student whose beauty had attracted a long list of suitors. "It was love at first sight for me," the future novelist recalled, "but I don't think it was for her."

His public profile had been considerably raised when he managed to persuade The Beatles to come and support a £500,000 fundraising effort for Oxfam, a charity which Archer supported.

After serving as a Conservative councillor in London, he was put on the selection list for the safe Tory seat of Louth in Lincolnshire.

A reporter on the Times, John Clare, discovered that another charity for which Archer worked alleged he had misused expenses with claims for meals at posh London restaurants.

Clare buttonholed Archer and, according to his own account, the would-be candidate burst into tears and asked that the story be quashed.

It eventually appeared in the paper but with many of the salient details left out.

Concerns about Archer's suitability were ignored by the party members in Louth who adopted him. In a by-election in December 1969, he won the seat with a handsome majority.

He and Mary set themselves up in an expensive Kensington house and he became a member of Lloyds. He also began to build up his profile in parliament where he was seen as a liberal member of his party.

But, in 1974, he suffered a blow after being persuaded to invest in a Canadian company which claimed to have developed a process to cut carbon emissions. It turned out to be a scam.

Archer had taken out a second mortgage, as well as borrowing large sums from elsewhere, to raise money for the investment. Threatened with bankruptcy, he was forced to quit his parliamentary seat.

However, he managed to secure an agreement with his creditors and wrote his first novel, Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less in 1976.

Charting an American immigrant's rise from messenger boy to corporate tycoon, it was inspired, in part, by his own financial problems and did much to solve them.

Despite being rubbished by many critics, it sold well in the US and then in Britain, earning Archer a considerable sum in royalties.

Three years later, Kane and Abel, a ripping page-turner about the roller-coaster financial fortunes of two men who initially shared nothing but a date of birth, flew off the shelves.

A third novel, published in 1984, First Among Equals, about a cutthroat competition to become Prime Minister, cemented Archer's position as one of Britain's best-selling and highest earning authors.

It enabled him to purchase the Old Vicarage at Grantchester near Cambridge, formerly the home of war poet, Rupert Brooke, as well as a penthouse in London.

There, he entertained the great and the good with legendary parties, serving with champagne and shepherd's pies.

First Among Equals, with its political theme, had more than hinted at Archer's desperation to get back into politics.

He got his chance in 1985, when Margaret Thatcher, impressed by his drive and personality, gave him an unpaid job as Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party with responsibility for fundraising.

It lasted just a year.

In October 1986, the News of the World published a picture of Archer's friend, Michael Stackpole, paying £2,000 to a sex worker named Monica Coghlan.

The money was supposedly a bribe to persuade her to go abroad, to avoid the prying eyes of the press.

And while the News of the World did not allege Archer had slept with Coghlan, the Daily Star was less reticent.

Archer resigned his party post and sued the Star for libel. In court, he claimed the payment had been a goodwill gesture to a woman down on her luck.

Friends also gave him an alibi for the night the Star had claimed he was enjoying the company of Ms Coghlan.

It was the evidence of Mary Archer that swung the case.

Her appearance in court so captivated the judge, Mr Justice Caulfield, that in his summing up, he asked why a man with such a fragrant wife would sleep with prostitutes.

"Is he in need of cold, unloving, rubber-insulated sex," Caulfield asked, "in a seedy hotel round about quarter to one on a Tuesday morning after an evening at the Caprice?"

The jury duly found for Archer and he was awarded £500,000 in damages. The News of the World later settled out-of-court with him, admitting they too had libelled him.

He went back to writing his books which continued to sell. By this time, he was thought to be worth more than £50m.

In 1992, he was offered a peerage by Conservative Prime Minister John Major in recognition for his work with a charity set up to help Kurds who were being oppressed by Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

His wife, meanwhile, had joined the board of Anglia Television which, in 1994, was the subject of a takeover bid. The day after the move was discussed by the board, Archer bought 50,000 shares in the company on behalf of a friend.

When the news of the takeover broke, the shares climbed in value and Archer made a profit of nearly £78,000.

A subsequent investigation cleared him of insider dealing, but soured relations with the Conservatives who were mired in their own battle against allegations of sleaze.

Undeterred, Archer, with the support of new Conservative leader William Hague, was selected as the Conservative candidate for Mayor of London in 1999.

Once more, the threat of scandal forced his resignation when the News of the World printed an interview with Archer's former friend, Ted Francis.

Francis alleged that the politician had lied on oath in his 1987 libel action against the Daily Star and Archer resigned as Conservative candidate for Mayor the next day.

There would be no forgiveness.

"This is the end of politics for Jeffrey Archer," said William Hague. "I will not tolerate such behaviour in my party."

In 2000, Archer was charged with perjury and perverting the course of justice.

At the same time, his play, The Accused, opened in London.

It featured a murder in which the audience were the jury and decided the guilt, or otherwise of the protagonist at the end of each performance.

In May 2001, a month after Monica Coghlan's death in a road accident, Archer went on trial. This time, his wife's testimony failed to sway the court. He was convicted and sentenced to four years in prison.

Shortly after his conviction, police began investigating allegations of corruption.

These related to the Kurdish charity in which Archer had been involved. There had been complaints that much of the £57m he said he'd raised never reached the Kurds.

However, police concluded that Archer, in fact, had received very little of the donations himself.

First in HM Prison Belmarsh and then in HM Prison Weyland, Archer used his incarceration profitably - by writing a three-volume account of his time inside entitled My Prison Diary.

Two years later, he was released, having served half of his sentence. "I learned a lot from it," he said. "The British people are very forgiving."

He retained his seat in the House of Lords, as there was no mechanism to remove an errant peer. He remained a member of Britain's upper house until his formal retirement in 2024.

Writing well into his mid-80s, he continued to churn out at least one, if not two, novels a year.

In the last years of his life, there were several volumes of The Clifton Chronicles: detailing the turbulent life of former dockworker, Harry Clifton.

There were also seven novels about a fictional policeman, William Warwick, who rises from humble constable in the Metropolitan police to the very top of his profession.

In January 2026, the 85-year-old announced that his forthcoming novel, Adam and Eve, would be his last.

An epic tale inspired by Hitler's indecision about whether to invade Britain, Archer poured everything into it. "Everyone would like to run their last 100m at the Olympics and win the gold medal," he told BBC Breakfast in September 2026.

Few critics praised Archer's prose style, his sense of humour, or the emotional depth of his characters.

But none could match his talent for relentless, aspirational, rags-to-riches plots that, once started, could not be put down.

Lord Archer often appeared incapable of separating autobiographical fact from fantasy in his continuing drive for public recognition.

He died a wealthy man, albeit one whom very few trusted.