The author and former politician Jeffrey Archer has died aged 86.
Archer, who was a Conservative MP for five years before serving as the party’s deputy chairman, died “suddenly and peacefully” at his home “between writing sessions” on Monday, his publisher Harper Collins said.
He had a successful career as a novelist and was made a life peer in 1992.
During a run to become mayor of London for the Conservatives in 1999, his political career was in effect ended when it emerged he had lied in court over a decade earlier when a newspaper accused him of paying money to a sex worker. He was convicted of perjury and perverting the course of justice and imprisoned for four years.
An Old Bailey jury found that he had lied in a libel action he had brought against the Star newspaper in 1987 in which he had been awarded £500,000 in damages.
He was released early in 2003 and returned to the House of Lords until he retired in 2024.
Kate Elton, Harper Collins UK’s chief executive and Archer’s editor, said: “It has been one of the great privileges of my publishing life to have been Jeffrey Archer’s editor.
“He was the master storyteller and an editor’s dream – phenomenally hard-working, utterly committed to completing draft after draft to get every word as perfect as possible, and a true champion of the team nature of great publishing.”
Archer’s death came just one day before the publication of his new novel, Adam and Eve, on Tuesday 6 October.
His first novel, Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less, was published in 1976, two years after bankruptcy marked the end of his time as a sitting MP. This marked the beginning of an enviable writing career. Archer spent a total of 14 years and five months on the Sunday Times bestseller lists and over five years on the New York Times bestseller lists, selling 300 million books in 119 countries in 49 languages. His 1979 novel Kane and Abel remains among the best-selling books in the world, having sold over 30 million copies to date.
His death came less than 24 hours after Archer had met and signed books for hundreds of fans at a sold-out event with broadcaster Gyles Brandreth at the Leicester Square Theatre in central London on Sunday, Harper Collins said.
Writing on X, 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 and had such a great reception from a packed house. He was funny, engaging and self-deprecating – a great storyteller to the last.”
Archer was first elected an MP in a 1969 byelection for the constituency of Louth in Lincolnshire when he was 29 years old, having already worked as a Conservative councillor for Havering in north-east London, a period during which he also ran a Mayfair art gallery.
Archer cast himself as a centrist in parliament, frequently rebelling against the right wing of the Conservative party, but his political career stalled when he became the victim of a fraudulent investment scheme, which left him almost half a million pounds in debt. He said he would therefore not stand in the 1974 election “due to financial difficulties”.
His first novel was a direct effort to regain financial control – a move that paid off, and Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less was adapted for radio, and later, for TV. By the mid-1980s Archer had written several successful novels as well as short stories, plays and children’s books.
As his literary career bore fruit, Archer returned to politics, becoming a popular speaker at grassroots events, leading Margaret Thatcher to appoint him deputy chairman of the Conservative party in 1985.
But in October 1986 he became embroiled in scandal when the News of the World claimed he’d spent £2,000 to pay off a “vice girl”, a story immediately followed by a more detailed story in the Star alleging Archer had paid for sex. Archer sued the Star when the case came to court the following year, winning £500,000 in damages but sowing the seeds for his downfall over a decade later.
When the allegations broke, the leader of the Conservative party at the time, William Hague, expelled Archer from the party saying: “This is the end of politics for Jeffrey Archer. I will not tolerate such behaviour in my party.”
At the time he was charged in 2000, he was also making headlines by starring in his own West End play The Accused, which ran at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in London, and in which Archer’s character played an alleged murderer on trial and in which the audience voted on whether they believed Archer’s character was guilty or innocent at the end of each performance.
Following sentencing he was imprisoned at Belmarsh, a category A prison in London but later moved to four other prisons before his release in 2003, having served half of his sentence.
Despite retaining his seat in the House of Lords, Archer did not take an active role in the upper chamber of parliament and gave up his seat in 2024.
Former Tory minister Nadhim Zahawi paid tribute to Archer, writing on X: “Jeffrey Archer was a dear friend and an extraordinary human being. His gift for storytelling was matched by his wit, warmth and boundless energy. Life was never dull in Jeffrey’s company.”
Archer had been due to be at the Cheltenham festival later in the month to discuss his forthcoming novel.
Archer is survived by his wife, Mary, and their sons, William and James.
