Jeffrey Archer, the British novelist and former Conservative politician whose career combined huge literary success with a spectacular fall from public life, has died at the age of 86. His publisher, HarperCollins, said he died "suddenly and peacefully" at his home on Monday, "between writing sessions". His final novel, Adam and Eve, which he had described as his last after some 50 years of storytelling, was due to be published the following day.
Archer's death came less than 24 hours after he met hundreds of fans and signed books at a sold-out event in central London with the broadcaster Gyles Brandreth, who described him as "in the most wonderful, ebullient form". Kate Elton, chief executive of HarperCollins UK and Archer's editor, called him "the master storyteller" and a writer who had brought joy to generations of readers. Former minister Nadhim Zahawi called him "a dear friend and an extraordinary human being". Archer had been due to appear at the Cheltenham Literary Festival this week. He had disclosed in 2014 that he was being treated for prostate cancer.
Born in London and raised in Wellington, in south-west England, Archer studied at Oxford and was elected a Conservative MP in 1969, aged 29, for Louth in Lincolnshire. In 1974 he left parliament after a failed investment in a Canadian company left him close to bankruptcy and almost half a million pounds in debt. He turned to writing to recover financially. His first novel, Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less, drew on that experience and became an unexpected success. Kane and Abel followed in 1979, selling more than 30 million copies and later being adapted as a US television series. In total his books sold some 300 million copies, though critics were often unenthusiastic.
His political career revived as he became a popular speaker and a prolific fundraiser for the party. In 1985 Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher made him deputy chairman of the Conservatives. A year later he resigned after it emerged he had paid £2,000 to a sex worker, Monica Coghlan. He said the money was meant to help her leave the country and escape press attention. He sued the Daily Star over its claim that he had slept with her, and in 1987 won £500,000 in damages.
That victory unravelled over a decade later. In 1999, while seeking the Conservative nomination for London mayor, it emerged that a friend, Ted Francis, had been asked to provide a false alibi. Archer was expelled from the party, and in 2001 he was convicted of perjury and perverting the course of justice and sentenced to four years in prison. He was released in 2003 after serving half the term, and wrote a three-volume prison diary. He remained a member of the House of Lords, where he had sat as a life peer since 1992, until he retired in 2024.
Archer's life was often as dramatic as his fiction, and he was known for bouncing back from setbacks. He is survived by his wife, Mary, a scientist who stood by him through the scandals, and their sons, William and James.