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Jeffrey Howard Archer, Baron Archer of Weston-super-Mare (born 15 April 1940) is an English author and former politician. He was an MP and Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party, and prior to his conviction and imprisonment for perjury was a candidate in the 2000 race to be London Mayor.

Biography

There has been much confusion over the details of Archer's life and there is evidence that he has exploited ambiguities or else fabricated details on many occasions - for example, he once claimed in a television interview that his father was Viceroy of Brunei, and at another time referred to him as British consul in Singapore. Not only is this untrue, but Brunei has never had a Viceroy, nor did Singapore have a British consul at the time (having been a British colony). What is most peculiar is that a man with some talent and certainly proven marketing skills felt the need to fabricate, or at very least "embroider", certain facts of his life, to the point that he became a Walter Mitty-like character.

The research conducted by Michael Crick, Archer's unofficial biographer, reveals that Archer's father, William Archer, was originally a solicitor's clerk in the East End of London, but disappeared (leaving a wife and children). Crick claims that Archer's father, upon emigrating to the United States, then fabricated a military record for himself, claiming to have served as an officer in the British Army during the First World War. His second marriage, to the American Florence Brainerd, collapsed when this fraud was revealed. William Archer, according to Crick's account, then returned to Britain in his late fifties and remarried for a third time, to Lola Cook, a much younger woman. Jeffrey Archer was a child of this marriage.

Early life

He was born in the City of London Maternity Hospital, and most of his childhood was spent in the seaside town of Weston-super-Mare, Somerset. After leaving school with few qualifications, he worked in a number of jobs, including training with the Army, and teaching at Dover College. He also trained for the Police.

Oxford

He gained a place at Brasenose College, Oxford to study for a one-year diploma in education, though he eventually stayed there for three years. However, he is not a person who would normally be classed an "Oxford graduate", despite his claims to the contrary in later interviews, although he does hold a valid academic qualification awarded by Oxford University.

While at Oxford he was successful in athletics, competing in sprinting and hurdling. He also made a name for himself in raising money for the then little-known charity Oxfam, famously managing to obtain the support of The Beatles in a charity fundraising drive. The band accepted his invitation to visit the Senior Common Room of his Brasenose College, where they were photographed with Archer and dons of the college. It was during this period that he met his wife, Mary.

Politics and writing

After leaving university, he continued as a charity fundraiser but with no success, working for the National Birthday Trust, a medical charity. He also began a career in politics, serving as a councillor on the Greater London Council. At the age of 29 he was elected as a Member of Parliament (MP) for the Lincolnshire constituency of Louth, holding the seat for the Conservative Party in a by-election. Later, he would claim to have been the youngest MP ever, but he was not even the youngest in the House of Commons at the time.

In 1974, Archer became heavily insolvent after falling victim to a fraudulent investment scheme involving Aquablast, a Canadian company. Faced with likely bankruptcy, he stood down as an MP at the October 1974 general election, and turned to writing paperbacks. His first book, Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less was a success, and he ultimately avoided bankruptcy, never being legally declared bankrupt. Kane and Abel proved to be his best-selling work, reaching number 1 on the New York Times bestsellers list. It was made into a television miniseries. Archer purchased the Old Vicarage, Grantchester, a house associated with the poet Rupert Brooke.

In 1974, Archer was detained on suspicion of shoplifting from a store in Toronto, Canada, although no charges were made. After many years of denying that the incident took place, Archer has since admitted to its truthfulness. Michael Crick has researched the incident, finding that Archer was possibly not aware that he had left the store (owing to the design of the building), and may therefore not have been guilty of theft, but that Archer did later lie about the incident.

Archer's political career revived once he became well known for his writing. He was made Deputy Chairman of the Conservative party by Margaret Thatcher, created a life peer in 1992 by John Major, and was selected by the party as candidate for the London mayoral election of 2000. William Hague, then leader of the Conservative Party, publicly supported him and rejected doubts about his suitability in the light of his previous career. He was forced to withdraw from the race when it was revealed that he was facing a charge of perjury (see below). Throughout his later career, he was investigated by the journalist Michael Crick, who has become semi-famous as Archer's unofficial biographer and nemesis.

On 26 February 2006, on Andrew Marr's Sunday AM programme, Archer said he had no interest in returning to politics: he would pursue his writing career instead.

Lord Archer was awarded the prestigious Honorary Patronage of the University Philosophical Society in 2006.

Share dealings

In January 1994, Mary Archer, a director of Anglia Television, attended a directors' meeting at which an impending takeover of Anglia Television by MAI, who owned Meridian Broadcasting, was discussed. The following day, Jeffrey Archer bought 50,000 shares in Anglia Television, acting on behalf of a friend. 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, making a profit of £77,219. The arrangments he had made with the stockbrokers, which he had never used before, meant that he did not actually have to hand over any money when buying the shares. A cheque for the profits was simply mailed to his London apartment.

An inquiry was launched by the Stock Exchange into possible insider trading. The Department of Trade and Industry, which was run by fellow Tory Michael Heseltine, later announced that Archer would not be prosecuted.

Perjury

In 1987 he sued the Daily Star for libel when they alleged that he had had sex with an Irish prostitute, Monica Coghlan. He won the case and was awarded £500,000 damages, but not everyone was convinced by the verdict. The journalist, Adam Raphael wrote an article at the time which carefully avoided libel but implied a number of things: that Archer probably had gone with a prostitute; that at the trial Archer and his lawyers had shifted attention from this issue to the tactics used by the Daily Star to trap Archer; and that the Daily Star had only themselves to blame for this.

There was also widespread astonishment caused by the description by the judge (Mr Justice Caulfield) of Mrs Archer in his summing up: "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?". His implication was that Archer had no need of a prostitute when he had such a lovely wife.

Some years later a friend (to whom he had lent a considerable sum of money and who Archer said was refusing to repay) and Archer's former personal assistant (whom Archer had been semi-maintaining) then claimed that he had fabricated an Alibi in that case. They were apparently concerned that Archer was standing as Mayor of London and doubted that he was suitable for the post. The personal secretary had apparently kept a secret diary of Archer's movements. While this formed the basis of the case against Archer, the secretary also made the surprising claim that Archer had been involved in the murder of British TV presenter Jill Dando, who, it was suggested in leaked statements, had supposedly been mistakenly killed by an assassin hired by Archer to murder a key witness in the perjury trial. Whilst this is an incredible allegation, it should be noted as fact that, in the first volume of his 'Prison Diaries', Archer recalls a prisoner offering to have his (Archer's) former secretary dealt with.

Archer was put on trial for perjury and perverting the course of justice in December 2000. A few days before the beginning of the perjury trial, Archer began performing in the star role in a courtroom play (which he also wrote) called The Accused. The play was staged at London's Theatre Royal Haymarket and concerns the court trial of an alleged murderer from beginning to end. While its plot appeared to have been largely borrowed from a 1950s film, Witness for the Prosecution (based on a novel by Agatha Christie), the play used the innovation of assigning the role of jury in the trial to the audience, with theatre-goers voting on whether Archer's character was innocent or guilty at the end of each night's performance. Archer would attend his real trial during the day and be judged in his fictional trial at the theatre in the evening.

On July 19, 2001, Lord Archer was found guilty and sentenced to a total of four years' imprisonment. These events cast considerable public doubt on the verdict of the libel case. The most ironic aspect of his trial was that he had fabricated the alibi for the wrong date.

He was originally sent to Belmarsh Prison, but was moved to the category C Wayland Prison in Norfolk on August 9, and to HMP North Sea Camp, an open prison, by October 2001. From there he was let out to work at the Theatre Royal in Lincoln, England, and was allowed occasional home visits. Reports in the media, which showed a continuing interest in him, claimed that he had been abusing this privilege by attending lunches with friends, and in September 2002 he was transferred to Lincoln Prison. In October 2002 it was reported that Archer had offered to repay the Daily Star the £500,000 damages he had received, as well as legal costs of the order of £1 million.

In July 2003 he was released on licence, after serving half of his sentence, from HMP Hollesley Bay, Suffolk. In September 2003, the government announced reforms that would prevent convicted criminals from serving in the House of Lords; supporters argued that many peers with far more serious convictions, such as Harold Wilson's friend Lord Kagan, were not stripped of their titles. Those reforms have yet to be implemented.

Many of Lord Archer's friends remained loyal to him. He and Lady Archer were invited guests to the Memorial Service for Norris McWhirter at St Martin-in-the-Fields on Thursday, October 7, 2004, where they were observed sitting in the same pew as former head of the Conservative Monday Club, Gregory Lauder-Frost, and directly in front of Lady Thatcher, who made a point of embracing Lady Archer.

In November 2005, after being expelled from the Conservative Party in 2000, he made a bid to rejoin the party. The Independent newspaper reports of the “coincidence” that his bid to rejoin the Conservative party, and the ensuing publicity, coincides with details of his forthcoming book being released.

Themes found in his work

Archer seems to be a big fan of interweaving characters; "Kane and Abel" is the obvious example, where two men, born on different sides of the world in completely opposite surroundings eventually meet in stories which span a lifetime; similar situations with "Sons of Fortune" and "Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less". He uses this device with heroes and villains too, as found in "As the Crow Flies" and "First Among Equals".

Archer very often takes his characters from the upper classes of the UK or New England, discussing mannerisms and sensitivities from that layer of society. The majority of his works are set in the USA, though his characters tend to use British grammar.

His "non-epic" works (A Matter of Honour, a chase story, and Shall We Tell the President?, a detective thriller) are usually set within a much shorter timeframe and have fewer characters.

Art also is a theme in his works. Several novels and short stories have had a focus around works of art. A Matter of Honour focused around a work of art, plus the secret it held. First Among Equals also featured a work of art as plot device. Sons of Fortune had one main character collecting "Painted Mistresses", and As the Crow Flies featured an art expert, and collector of art as main characters. In Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less the victim of the con game buys a fake Van Gogh picture as one of the schemes to get even with the man the protagonists were defrauded by. A Van Gogh painting is at the centre of False Impression while the short story Not for Sale is centred around a talented young artist having her first exhibition. Additionaly, the short story Chalk and Cheese centred on the differing lives of two brothers, one of whom was an artist, and the other of whom bought an art dealer. Archer's love of art was revealed in his Prison Diaries, where he talked about how he tried to buy a Botero from another inmate.

The other prevailing theme among Archer's works is his twist endings. It happens in his thrillers, his novels, and his short stories. For example, in his short story Just Good Friends the first-person narrative describes somebody who went home with some guy she met in a pub and stayed with him ever since. Her own life was that of abandonment by her mother (who only left her a fur coat), impregnation by somebody who never saw her again, her children taken away by the authorities, and never telling anything to the guy she is living with. She also doesn't respond to the alarm clock, letting the guy get up and fix food for them. Only in the end do we realize the narrator is a female cat.

Bibliography

References

External links

1940 births | Living people | British MPs | British political scandals | UK Conservative Party politicians | Life peers | English novelists | English thriller writers | English criminals | Perjurors | People known in connection with a lawsuit | Londoners | Former students of Brasenose College, Oxford | Incarcerated celebrities | North Somerset | Members of the Greater London Council | British criminals

Jeffrey Archer | ג'פרי ארצ'ר | ジェフリー・アーチャー

 

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