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.

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.

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.

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.