(1940- )
A colorful figure with a high public profile in Great Britain, Jeffrey Archer’s life—a heady mix of wealth, ambition, literary and political success, and scandal—resembles nothing so much as the overblown curriculum vitae of the hero of a trashy best-seller by Harold robbins, Jackie collins . . . or Archer himself. He has been at various times, and often concurrently, a millionaire businessman, a writer of best-selling pop fiction, the youngest elected member of Parliament, a life peer with a seat in the House of Lords, a flashy art collector, a telegenic media pundit and controversial talking head, the star of headline-making sexual and business controversies, and a convict.
Archer’s youthful doings were chronicled by his newspaper columnist mother Lola Cook Archer in her “Over the Teacups: News and Jottings for Women” (Jeffrey was known as “Tuppence” in Mum’s column). After receiving his degree—in sports education, ordinarily intended for future gym teachers—from Oxford, he was soon running a successful public relations company. At 29 the Conservative Archer won a seat in Parliament, but five years later he was compelled to give up his rising political position when he became attached to a major business scandal involving fraud and massive economic losses. To recoup his own great losses and to set the record straight, he wrote a novel about grand scale revenge with a background of international finance and embezzlement. Published in 1976, Not a Penny More, Not a
Penny Less, with a compellingly readable story line and a large cast of colorful and glamorous characters, was a best-seller in Britain and America.
What might have been a fluke became the beginning of Archer’s career as a pop novelist with brand name appeal and one top-selling release after another. In addition to providing easily-consumed stories with crackling plotlines and strong characters, Archer understood the rising value of media savviness and personal promotion. He developed an alluring talk-show persona and exploitable subject matter that guaranteed plenty of publicity in print and on television, Archer’s high profile had its downside. Critics and journalists took particular delight in ridiculing the high-handed Tory’s pulp offerings. The reviewer in the Guardian, for instance, declared that “to call his characters cardboard was to insult the packaging industry.”
Archer’s second novel, Shall We Tell the President?, stirred controversy on two sides of the Atlantic for its “alternative” premise about “President Ted Kennedy” becoming the target of an assassin. In the best-sellers ahead, Archer would continue to make provocative use of real-life figures within his fictional premises, including press baron Rupert Murdoch in The Fourth Estate and an adoring portrait of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in First Among Equals.
He continued to hold political ambitions, but the prying tabloids and his own colorful personality worked against him. He won a much-ballyhooed libel trial against a London tabloid that had linked him in a cheap hotel fling with a prostitute, but this success became a disaster when he was found to have arranged for friends to give false testimony in the libel trial. Archer was sued for millions of pounds and drummed out of the Conservative Party—just at the time when the multitalented Englishman had been planning to run for mayor of London. Even more disastrously, he was convicted of perjury and sentenced to two years in prison.
Works
- After Shock (1998);
- As the Crow Flies (1991);
- Eleventh Commandment, The (1998);
- First Among Equals (1984);
- Fourth Estate, The (1996);
- Honor Among Thieves (1993);
- Kane and Abel (1980);
- Matter of Honor, A (1986);
- Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less (1976);
- Prodigal Daughter, The (1982);
- Proprietors, The (1996);
- Quiver Full of Arrows, A (1982);
- Shall We Tell the President? (1977);
- Twist in the Tale, A (1989)
