Jeffrey Archer has died suddenly and peacefully at home aged 86, HarperCollins have announced.
The best-selling novelist passed away ‘between writing sessions’ just a day before the scheduled release of his new book Adam And Eve, the publisher added.
His novels have sold more than 300million copies in 115 countries. He leaves his wife Dame Mary, 81, an eminent scientist, and sons William, 54, and James, 52 – and five young grandchildren.
Lord Archer was the MP for Louth between 1969 and 1974 and later entered the House of Lords in 1992 after being made a life peer by John Major.
After losing his seat in the 70s, he turned to writing with his 1979 novel Kane And Abel still one of the best selling books in the world having sold over 30 million copies.
Reviving his political career the following decade, Lord Archer became the deputy chairman of the Conservative party in 1985 while Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister.
He and Dame Mary remained close friends with Baroness Thatcher, who was a regular attendee at their legendary Krug and shepherd’s pie Christmas parties in their Thames penthouse until her death in 2010.
Lord Archer announced in 1999 he was running for the Mayor of London for the Tories, receiving the backing of Baroness Thatcher, John Major and then leader William Hague, but was forced to back out after accusations he had lied in a previous libel case.
The novelist and his wife celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary in July with a garden party for 321 friends at their second home, the Old Vicarage in Grantchester, Cambridge.
Leader of the Conservative Party Kemi Badenoch led the tributes for Lord Archer, describing him as a ‘dear friend’.
Jeffrey Archer, pictured with his wife Mary, has died ‘suddenly and peacefully at home’ aged 86, publishers Harper Collins have announced
Lord Archer pictured with Margaret Thatcher in 1986. His novels have sold more than 300million copies in 115 countries
The novelist pictured on Sunday, the day before he died. leaves his wife Dame Mary, 81, an eminent scientist, and sons William, 54, and James, 52 – and five young grandchildren
The couple also owned a penthouse on the Thames as well as a place in Majorca, where Jeffrey wrote many of his novels.
Estimates this year placed the novelist’s fortune at around £200million but he declined to comment on this when speaking to the Daily Mail in September.
Lord Archer’s last interview was with the Daily Mail last month where he discussed his career and health issues, as well as his upcoming book.
Following a cancer diagnosis in 2013, Lord Archer of Weston-super-Mare had surgery to remove his prostate which, he revealed, rendered him permanently impotent.
‘I’d rather have a life. “Fertile and dead”. It’s not much of a choice, is it?’ he previously said.
The last picture of Lord Archer was taken as he left the BBC on Sunday, having promoted the publication of Adam And Eve along with the likes of Gyles Brandreth.
The book, which Lord Archer was said to be ‘very excited’ about, explores Hitler’s reluctance to invade Britain, with the idea first birthed six years ago.
Adam And Eve was always to be his final novel, with Lord Archer telling this paper: ‘I’m 86. I don’t think I could do it again. So why not go now?
‘It’s hard work. I write every word in longhand with felt tip pen on a 32-line pad. I hand-wrote 18 drafts over two years. I don’t know how to turn on a computer.’
He added in September: ‘I find old age tiresome. I don’t think I’d like to live to 100. I have a hip problem.
‘I can’t move as fast as I’d like to but thankfully Mary and I both seem to be firing on all cylinders mentally.
‘Alzheimer’s is my biggest dread, so I test my memory all the time; for names, places, events.’
‘I’m conscious that time is precious now’, Mary – who previously overcame bladder cancer – told the Daily Mail in September.
‘We must use it well and I’d rather spend our old age together than apart. We’ve both been through cancer.’
Paying tribute on Monday evening, Ms Badenoch wrote: ‘This is a huge shock. I am incredibly saddened to hear this news. He had sent me a lovely message just this morning and was always a great source of encouragement to me personally. I can’t believe he’s gone.
‘He was a dear friend to so many of us and the Conservative Family will be reeling at this news.
‘Our thoughts are with Dame Mary and all their family at this time.’
Mr Brandreth said: ‘Just yesterday I did a show with Jeffrey Archer to celebrate his new novel – he said it was to be his last.
‘He was in the most wonderful, ebullient form & had such a great reception from a packed house.
‘He was funny, engaging & self-deprecating – a great storyteller to the last.’
Born in north London in 1940, Jeffrey Archer was soon on the move to Weston-super-Mare in Somerset after his parents bought a house there just two weeks on from his birth.
He attended Wellington School on the edge of Exmoor, leaving school with three O-levels before spending time in the army.
Having returned from a physical education course in the US, Lord Archer joined the Met Police as a probationary constable and later became a physical training instructor at a Hampshire prep school.
Dover College backed his attempt to enter Oxford as a mature student and he joined a one-year Diploma of Education course, excelling in athletics during his time at the university.
He married Mary Weeden in 1966 after the pair met at Oxford. Around this time, he convinced The Beatles to support a £500,000 fundraising effort for Oxfam.
Lord Archer arrived in the political world becoming a Conservative councillor in London before being winning his Lincolnshire seat.
He built up his reputation inside and outside politics, gaining a reputation as a liberal figure within the Tory party while also buying an expensive place in Kensington.
After suffering financial difficulties following the end of his first stint in politics in 1974, Jeffrey and Mary were saved first by her offer of a teaching job at Cambridge University, and later by his £2million advance for Kane And Abel.
Lord Archer had written his first novel Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less in 1976, which was inspired in part by his own money woes, and sufficiently popular to fix them somewhat.
Lord Archer was forced to resign as deputy chairman of the Conservatives after he was accused of paying money to a sex worker.
He won a libel case in 1987 over the claims and was awarded large damages.
Lord Archer’s infidelities were publicly documented during and after his subsequent trial for perjury and perverting the course of justice in 2001, for which he was found guilty and served two years in prison.
When he was locked up in Belmarsh high security prison in London, then Wayland in Norfolk and finally North Sea Camp in Lincolnshire, he used his time judiciously, to write diaries which later became bestsellers.
‘I was protected by a murderer called Big Al, he told the Daily Mail. ‘He’s no longer with us but I visited him for five years in prison. I visited three inmates in fact: two of them murderers.’
Lord Archer pictured with Thatcher in 1986. He was the MP for Louth between 1969 and 1974 and later entered the House of Lords in 1992
The novelist pictured addressing the Oxford Union in 2017
Lord Archer was forced to resign as deputy chairman of the Conservatives after he was accused of paying money to a sex worker but won a libel case in 1987 over the claims
He famously had a three-year affair with the late actress Sally Farmiloe, and another with his then secretary Andrina Colquhoun.
Dame Mary once said she’d never considered divorcing her husband but had come close to murdering him.
In his interview with the Daily Mail, he reflected on ambitions he never realised, saying: ‘I wish I’d won an Olympic gold and become Mayor of London.’
Lord Archer’s dream of running the capital was ended when it emerged he had lied in the libel case.
‘There are worse things in life than infidelity’: Jeffrey Archer’s wife Mary on the secret to their long-lasting marriage – as the couple give a fizzingly honest interview to mark the release of his final ever novel
Speaking to the Daily Mail on September 26 ahead of the publication of his final novel, Jeffrey Archer gave what turned out to be his last newspaper interview. Read it in full here.
By Frances Hardy
Jeffrey Archer, one of the world’s best-selling novelists, is still an incorrigible flirt. Enter our photographer with his pretty young assistant and Jeffrey is entranced.
Before I know it, we’re all in his penthouse bedroom, admiring both the spectacular London skyscape through vast floor-to-ceiling windows – and Jeffrey’s magnificent, intricately carved 17th-century four-poster bed.
Above the bed, a huge Lichtenstein speech balloon Pop Art cartoon proclaims: ‘Oh Jeff… I love you too. But…’
Lord Archer’s long-serving PR is mildly incredulous. ‘I’ve only been in this room a couple of times and I’ve known Jeffrey for decades,’ she says.
Ah, the power of youth and beauty. Jeffrey, 86, chats animatedly to the 20-something photographic assistant who, it emerges, also works as a stunt double. ‘You’re such a flirt’, I tell him. ‘Oh yes! What man isn’t?’ he replies.
‘But you can’t act on it these days’, I remind him.
Following a cancer diagnosis in 2013, Lord Archer of Weston-super-Mare had surgery to remove his prostate which, he revealed, rendered him permanently impotent. ‘I’d rather have a life. “Fertile and dead”. It’s not much of a choice, is it?’ he told me last time we met.
‘Was this loss of libido like being unshackled from a madman?’ I ask now. ‘Don’t get cheeky’, he scolds and goes on to explain why the combination of brains and beauty is so intoxicating.
Jeffrey reveres strong, attractive, intelligent women. He surrounds himself with them. His wife of 60 years, Dame Mary, 81, an eminent scientist, is among them.
His novels, which have sold more than 300million copies in 115 countries – and funded three glorious homes and a collection of priceless art works – are also brimful of beautiful, independent, feisty females.
And now his legions of fans worldwide have a final blockbuster to savour, with a spirited and stunning heroine at its heart.
You read that correctly: Jeffrey Archer, master of the page turner, consummate storyteller, has written his last novel, exactly 50 years since his first (Not A Penny More, Not A Penny Less) – and chosen to give his farewell interview exclusively to the Daily Mail.
Adam & Eve, set amid the tumult of the Second World War, is published next month. It is, in many ways, a bookend to his first international best-seller Kane and Abel – which sold a million copies in its first week alone – sharing the premise of two children, both born on the same day (Armistice Day 1918) but to families at either end of the social spectrum.
Adam is a shepherd’s son; Eve the daughter of an Earl. Racing along at a cracking pace, with all the trademark Archer plot twists and cliff-hangers, it examines a popular theme in his fiction: the gap between where people’s lives start and where they end.
Why has he chosen to make this novel his last?
‘It’s my most ambitious yet and I genuinely think the best I’ve ever written,’ he says.
‘I’m 86. I don’t think I could do it again. So why not go now?
‘It’s hard work. I write every word in longhand with felt tip pen on a 32-line pad. I hand-wrote 18 drafts over two years. I don’t know how to turn on a computer.
‘Besides, some authors’ last books are embarrassing. They go on too long. Some even go on writing after their death “with help from” co-authors. I’ve put in my will that that can’t happen. It’s swindling the public – but the public aren’t stupid.
‘I find old age tiresome’, he adds. ‘I don’t think I’d like to live to 100. I have a hip problem. I can’t move as fast as I’d like to but thankfully Mary and I both seem to be firing on all cylinders mentally.
‘Alzheimer’s is my biggest dread, so I test my memory all the time; for names, places, events.’
Jeffrey loves a drama. He does not merely speak but harrumphs, squawks and guffaws; his voice ranging through the octaves from grumbling baritone to indignant falsetto. He is great company.
He parries probing questions with mock outrage. ‘How rich are you?’ I ask.
Estimates put his fortune at around £200million but today he declares: ‘You are a rude human being to ask! Genuinely I don’t know what I’m worth.
‘Some people care passionately about money. I don’t. As long as I can watch cricket, go to the theatre, do my charity auctions (he has raised a reputed £54million through these sales) and indulge my real passion, which is art.’
So no private jet or yacht? ‘No. I have an electric Mini. Perfect for getting round London. Mary has one, too.’
He tells a story about Mary’s frugality: ‘She had an Audi for 22 years. I got fed up with telling her to get a new car, so I drove it into town and left the keys in it. But no one stole it! So we sold it for £100.’
Clearly he enjoys her disregard for material possessions. I later discover her oldest shoes are a 61-year-old pair of Hush Puppies.
‘I’ll tell her to get a new suit or some jewellery and she won’t. I’ve had friends whose wives weren’t like that,’ he says pointedly. ‘Mary’s parsimonious. She has such integrity and an amazing work ethic.’ His admiration for her is genuine and heartfelt.
It emerges that Jeffrey is selling off his vast and diverse art collection. Or at least Mary is.
‘The proceeds are all going to her charities. She’s building a children’s hospital in Cambridge. Before I die she’ll have fleeced me. She’s a common thief!’
Despite Mary’s gradual decimation of his art collection, their vast, L-shaped sitting room, with its mesmerising vista of the Thames from Battersea Power Station to The Shard, unfurling through those giant windows, is still stuffed with treasures.
On one wall alone are two Picassos. I spot a Pissarro and a prized townscape by Impressionist Claude Monet of the Houses of Parliament hangs in the hall.
Suddenly Jeffrey breaks off from our chat to cry: ‘Enter the Dame!’
‘The most long-suffering wife in Britain!’ I add. ‘That’s very naughty of you’, he tuts.
Mary, awarded a DBE in 2012 for services to the NHS, click-clacks across the vast acreage of marbled floor in block heels – that she’s had for decades – looking dazzling in a bronze coat dress, decorated with black swirls.
Discreet gold jewellery glints at her throat and wrists. Her hair is black as a raven’s wing and her smile is warm, which surprises me as I had expected glacial aloofness. She carries a mug, bearing the periodic table, full of milky tea. ‘I can sing it! I did at our 60th wedding anniversary party,’ she beams.
The Archers, who have two handsome, accomplished sons – William, 54, and James, 52 – and five young grandchildren, celebrated this marital milestone in July with a garden party for 321 friends at their second home, the Old Vicarage in Grantchester, Cambridge. They have a third, a villa in Majorca, where Jeffrey writes his novels.
The enduring conundrum persists: why is the beautiful, academic Mary – famously lauded as ‘fragrant’ by the judge at her husband’s 1987 libel action over claims he had slept with a prostitute – still married to him?
Jeffrey’s infidelities were publicly documented during and after his subsequent trial for perjury and perverting the course of justice in 2001, for which he was found guilty and served two years in prison.
‘My dear late friend Barry Humphries said, “I have a word that encapsulates Mary… tolerant”, hams Jeffrey. ‘I adore the woman. I’d be lost without her. I just hope I die first. I’d last a week without her and it would be a bad one, at that.’
Mary once said she’d never considered divorcing Jeffrey – she confirms this today – but had come close to murdering him.
But how did she get over his infidelities? Jeffrey had a three-year affair with the late actress Sally Farmiloe, another with his then secretary Andrina Colquhoun.
‘People think it’s strange when I say this but there are worse things in a marriage than infidelity. Illness for a start. Debt.’
The Archers faced near bankruptcy in 1974 when Jeffrey, then Tory MP for Louth, Lincolnshire, lost his life savings of nearly £500,000 in a bad investment.
‘It was the making of me – although I didn’t think so at the time,’ he says now.
He stepped down as an MP and the Archers, then parents of a baby and toddler, lost their family home. Mary saved them, securing a teaching job at Cambridge University which came with accommodation and they lived on her modest don’s salary – until in 1979 Kane And Abel earned him a £2million advance.
‘After that,’ he says with a touch of bombast, ‘Mary’s achievements were not harmed by the fact that she didn’t have to worry that her work didn’t pay. She became chair of trustees of the Science Museum. They doubled her salary from nought to nought.’
I ask her why – even during the darkest times – she never thought about quitting the marriage. She answers with studied restraint.
‘Much of your life runs along on railway tracks. Then you come to a junction where you can choose the ‘I can cope’ route or the ‘I can’t cope.’ When you get into
the habit of coping you learn resilience. It’s harder if you say, ‘I crumbled last time but I’ll cope now.’ I’ve never suffered from depression, for which I’m very grateful. I’ve always taken the view that if today wasn’t great, tomorrow’s another day.’
They have, it seems, reached a period of comfortable equanimity. ‘I’m conscious that time is precious now’, says Mary. ‘We must use it well and I’d rather spend our old age together than apart. We’ve both been through cancer.’ Mary overcame bladder cancer in 2011.
‘But I think we’re both fit for our age. I practise getting up from the floor without using my hands. It’s a brute but I can do it. We go swimming, jogging; to the gym.’
She continues: ‘I rather like having Jeffrey around, cluttering up the place.
‘We’ve certainly had a very eventful life, although I can’t say I’ve enjoyed every minute.
‘There have been moments of irritation and anger but I don’t do tempests. I very, very seldom lose my temper.
‘Jeffrey’s fun. Very different from me. He has a wide circle of friends, energy and drive. Yes, I feel I’ve enjoyed rather than endured him.’
I ask if he has any regrets and he says: ‘Anyone who pretends they don’t is living in a dream world. You cannot expect to sail through life with everything going your way. If I had, I might have ended up as Secretary of State for Transport and never written a word.’
He reflects on ambitions he never realised: ‘I wish I’d won an Olympic gold and become Mayor of London.’ He became a life peer in 1992 and was poised to be elected the capital’s mayor when he had to resign his candidacy after it emerged he had lied in the libel case.
Did he ever covet a literary prize? Highbrow critics have derided him but his legions of fans applaud the genius of his deft plotting. ‘You’ll never win prizes for being a storyteller but once you sell you clearly don’t need them,’ he says.
Around him the sheer imperial opulence of the room testifies to this: clusters of cream sofas sit on densely woven carpets; glossy art books are stacked neatly on glass-topped coffee tables. A vast dining table is overhung by a giant chandelier.
A curved staircase leads to a mezzanine floor where Jeffrey’s PA works unseen – and the view wraps round it all, a peerless panorama of London unfolding on both sides of the great river.
It is hard to imagine him confined to a prison cell but he does not dwell on the contrast when
I ask about his two years of incarceration.
Even when he was locked up in Belmarsh high security prison in London, then Wayland in Norfolk and finally North Sea Camp in Lincolnshire, he used his time judiciously, to write diaries which later became bestsellers.
I wonder if he was ever frightened. ‘I was protected by a murderer called Big Al.
‘He’s no longer with us but I visited him for five years in prison. I visited three inmates in fact: two of them murderers.’
It is a measure of his character that he is a constant friend and also inspires loyalty in others.
He and Mary remained close friends with the late Margaret Thatcher, who appointed Jeffrey deputy chairman of the Conservative Party in 1985.
Baroness Thatcher was a regular attendee at their Krug and shepherd’s pie Christmas parties in the penthouse until her health failed in 2010.
The Archers held the last of these parties last year. Friends had died; others, aged, found it hard to stand for three hours.
There has been a final valediction for their garden parties this year, too. Now no more novels either.
Jeffrey Archer’s world is constricting as he ages but something tells me there will always be a glint in his eye when there’s a strong, capable – and attractive – woman in his orbit.
Adam & Eve by Jeffrey Archer is published by HarperCollins on October 6, priced £22 hardback.
