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Jeffrey Archer

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Jeffrey Howard Archer, Baron Archer of Weston-super-Mare (born 15 April 1940) is an British author and former politician. He is married to Mary Archer, who is an electrochemist. He was a Member of Parliament (MP) and Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party, and prior to his conviction and imprisonment for perjury was a candidate in the 2000 race to be London Mayor. He also has been a physical education teacher, an army cadet and a trainee police officer.

Biography

There has been much confusion over the details of Archer's life and there is evidence that he has exploited ambiguities or else fabricated details on many occasions - for example, he once claimed in a television interview that his father was Viceroy of Brunei, and at another time referred to him as British consul in Singapore. Strangely, Brunei has never had a Viceroy, nor did Singapore have a British consul at the time (having been a British colony).

The research conducted by Michael Crick, Archer's unofficial biographer, reveals that Archer's father, William Archer, was originally a solicitor's clerk in the East End of London, but disappeared (leaving a wife and children). Crick claims that Archer's father, upon emigrating to the United States, then fabricated a military record for himself, claiming to have served as an officer in the British Army during the First World War. His second marriage, to the American Florence Brainerd, collapsed when this fraud was revealed. William Archer, according to Crick's account, then returned to Britain in his late fifties and remarried for a third time, to Lola Cook, a much younger woman. Jeffrey Archer was a child of this marriage. William Archer died in March 1956 and Lola later remarried.

Early life

Jeffrey Howard Archer was born in the City of London Maternity Hospital. When he was two weeks old he and his family moved to the seaside town of Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, where he spent most of his early life. In 1951 he won a scholarship to Wellington School, in Somerset.

Archer left school after passing three O-levels, in English Literature, Art and History. He worked in a number of jobs, including training with the army and for the police. He lasted only a few months in either position, but he fared very well as a physical Education teacher at Dover College. As a person and teacher he was very popular with his pupils and is reported to have had very good motivational skills.

Oxford

He gained a place at Brasenose College, Oxford to study for a one-year diploma in education, though he eventually stayed there for three years, gaining an academic qualification in teaching awarded by Oxford University.

While at Oxford he was successful in athletics, competing in sprinting and hurdling. He also made a name for himself in raising money for the then little-known charity Oxfam, famously managing to obtain the support of The Beatles in a charity fundraising drive. The band accepted his invitation to visit the Senior Common Room of his Brasenose College, where they were photographed with Archer and dons of the college, although they didn't play there. It was during this period that he met his wife, Mary. They married in July 1966.

Early career

After leaving Oxford, he continued as a charity fundraiser but with no success, working for the National Birthday Trust, a medical charity. He also began a career in politics, serving as a councillor on the Greater London Council from 1967 onwards.

Member of Parliament

At the age of 29, he was elected as a Member of Parliament (MP) for the Lincolnshire constituency of Louth, holding the seat for the Conservative Party in a by-election on 4th December 1969. Archer beat Ian Gow to the selection after winning over a substantial proportion of younger members at the selection meeting. Later, he would claim to have been the youngest MP ever , however Archer was only the fifth youngest at the date of his election. Archer's campaign colour was a dayglo orange/pink with a blue arrow; the political parties in Lincolnshire had not abandoned local colours which were different from the party national colours. His Agent was Jean Blackbourne.

The Louth constituency consisted of three key areas: Louth, Cleethorpes and Immingham. During his time as a Member of Parliament, Archer was a regular at the Immingham Conservative Club in what was traditionally the most working class part of the constituency. His flamboyant personality and professionalism (he always drank orange juice) won him many friends in the town and the local party and public reaction to his possible bankruptcy was to encourage him to carry on regardless. Membership and activity within the local Conservative Party increased dramatically with Archer as MP, due to his energy and campaigning skills.

Archer remained as Honorary President of the Immingham Conservative Party until he withdrew from the 2000 election for Mayor of London in 1999.

Archer is to this day considered to be a local celebrity by the people of Immingham who were around when he was their Member of Parliament (although Archer has no family or business connections with the area). His increasingly rare visits to northern Lincolnshire continue to attract considerable local public interest.

In Parliament, Archer was on the left of the Conservative Party, rebelling against some of his party's policies. He urged free TV licences for the elderly and was against museum charges. Archer voted against restoring the death penalty saying it was barbaric and obscene. In 1971 he employed David Mellor, then needing money for his bar finals, to deal with his correspondence. He tipped Mellor to reach the cabinet in the future.

In 1974, Archer became heavily insolvent after falling victim to a fraudulent investment scheme involving Aquablast, a Canadian company. Faced with likely bankruptcy, he stood down as an MP at the October 1974 general election, and turned to writing paperbacks.

Archer was succeeded as Conservative MP for Louth by Michael Brotherton from 1974 to 1983 when the constituency was the subject of boundary changes. The towns of Cleethorpes and Immingham were represented by another colourful MP, Michael Brown, from 1979 to 1997 as part of the Brigg & Cleethorpes constituency.

Politics and writing

His first book, Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less was a success, and he ultimately avoided bankruptcy, never being legally declared bankrupt. Kane and Abel proved to be his best-selling work, reaching number 1 on the New York Times bestsellers list. It was made into a television mini-series. Archer purchased the Old Vicarage, Grantchester, a house associated with the poet Rupert Brooke.

In 1975, Archer was detained on suspicion of shoplifting from a store in Toronto, Canada, although no charges were made. After many years of denying that the incident took place, Archer has since admitted to its truthfulness. However Michael Crick, in the 1995 biography Stranger Than Fiction, has researched the incident and found that Archer was possibly not aware that he had left the store (owing to the design of the building) and may therefore not have been guilty of theft.

Archer's political career revived once he became well known for his writing. He was made Deputy Chairman of the Conservative party by Margaret Thatcher in 1985 and was made Norman Tebbit's deputy, despite the latter's misgivings, before he had to resign because of yet another scandal in October 1986 which would be infamous in later years. In the summer of 1986 Archer suggested that John Major would be a future Prime Minister. His judgement would be vindicated just over four years later.

Archer was created a life peer as Baron Archer of Weston-super-Mare, of Mark in the County of Somerset in 1992 by John Major, having become a confidante of the then Prime Minister.

Though against the death penalty, in a speech at the 1993 Conservative party conference, Archer urged the then Home Secretary Michael Howard, to "Stand and deliver" saying "Michael, I am sick and tired of being told by old people that they are frightened to open the door, they're frightened to go out at night, frightened to use the parks and byways where their parents and grandparents walked with freedom.... We say to you: stand and deliver!".

In the speech, Archer attacked violent films. He urged tougher prison conditions to prevent criminals from re-offending and slammed the role of do-gooders. He finished off the speech by criticizing the opposition parties Law and Order policies. Source: The Times newspaper (7th October 1993).

Libel case

In 1987, he sued the Daily Star for libel when they alleged that he had had sex with a prostitute named Monica Coghlan in September 1986. He won the case and was awarded £500,000 damages, but not everyone was convinced by the verdict. Journalist Adam Raphael wrote an article at the time that carefully avoided libel but implied a number of things: that Archer probably had gone with a prostitute; that at the trial Archer and his lawyers had shifted attention from this issue to the tactics used by the Daily Star to trap Archer; and that the Daily Star had only themselves to blame for this.

There was also widespread astonishment caused by the description by the judge (Mr Justice Caulfield) of Mrs Archer in his jury instructions, "Remember Mary Archer in the witness-box. Your vision of her probably will never disappear. Has she elegance? Has she fragrance? Would she have, without the strain of this trial, radiance? How would she appeal? Has she had a happy married life? Has she been able to enjoy, rather than endure, her husband Jeffrey?" The judge then went on to say of Jeffrey Archer, "Is he in need of cold, unloving, rubber-insulated sex in a seedy hotel round about quarter to one on a Tuesday morning after an evening at the Caprice?"

The editor of the Daily Star, Lloyd Turner, was sacked six weeks after the trial by the paper's owner Lord Stevens. He died of a heart attack in September 1996. Coghlan herself was killed in a car crash in April 2001. The car which crashed into Coghlan was stolen by a drug addict after committing an armed robbery. His blood alcohol content was over the legal limit. He was jailed just two weeks before Archer.

Share dealings

In January 1994, Mary Archer, a director of Anglia Television, attended a directors' meeting at which an impending takeover of Anglia Television by MAI, who owned Meridian Broadcasting, was discussed. The following day, Jeffrey Archer bought 50,000 shares in Anglia Television, acting on behalf of a friend, Mr Broosk Saib. Shortly after this, it was announced publicly that Anglia Television would be taken over by MAI. As a result the shares jumped in value, whereupon Archer sold them on behalf of his friend for a profit of £77,219. The arrangements he had made with the stockbrokers, which he had never used before, meant that he did not actually have to hand over any money when buying the shares. A cheque for the profits was simply mailed to his London apartment.

An inquiry was launched by the Stock Exchange into possible insider trading. The Department of Trade and Industry, headed by Michael Heseltine, later announced that Archer would not be prosecuted.

File:Private eye archer memorial.jpg
Private Eye cover shortly before Archer was jailed for perjury

Perjury and downfall

Archer had been selected by the Conservative Party as their candidate for the London mayoral election of 2000. He was forced to withdraw from the race when it was revealed that he was facing a charge of perjury.

In November 1999 Ted Francis, a friend (who claimed Archer owed him money) and Archer's former personal assistant Angela Peppiatt (whom Archer had been semi-maintaining) claimed that he had fabricated an alibi in the 1987 trial. They were apparently concerned that Archer was standing as Mayor of London and doubted that he was suitable for the post. The personal secretary had apparently kept a secret diary of Archer's movements. This formed the basis of the case against Archer.

The News of the World printed the allegations on 21 November 1999 and Archer was forced to resign as the Conservative's Mayoral candidate the following day by William Hague. He said "This is the end of Politics for Jeffrey Archer. I will not tolerate such behaviour in my party". Only weeks earlier, on 8 October he had described Archer as a candidate of "Probity and integrity. I'm going to back him all the way" at the Conservative party conference. Hague was never keen on Archer running for the job in the first place but as Archer was voted top of the poll by the Conservative associations he was forced to go along with that decision.

Whilst Hague was opposed to Archer standing for Mayor privately, he had to be seen to be backing Archer publicly. Had Archer stood in the election without his party leader's backing after winning a ballot, or had Hague said "I am against Archer for Mayor of London", it would have made him appear to be dictatorial, out of touch and that he was ignoring the wishes of ordinary Conservative party members and associations. Such a stance would have undermined Archer's legitimacy as a candidate and therefore led to certain defeat for the party. As it was, Steven Norris was selected when Archer was forced to resign, losing to Ken Livingstone in May 2000 but after scandal came to light involving Archer with regards to the 1987 libel trial, Hague had to be seen to be acting quickly, as opposed to the perceived dithering of John Major during the 1997 General Election over the candidacies of Neil Hamilton and Tim Smith, who were both involved in the cash for questions scandal.

On 4 February 2000 Archer was expelled from the Conservative Party for five years. On 26 September 2000 he was charged with perjury and perverting the course of justice (i.e. obstruction of justice) during the 1987 libel trial.

A few months before the beginning of the perjury trial, Archer began performing in the star role in a courtroom play (which he also wrote) called The Accused. The play was staged at London's Theatre Royal Haymarket and concerns the court trial of an alleged murderer from beginning to end. While its plot appeared to have been largely borrowed from a 1950s film, Witness for the Prosecution (based on a play by Agatha Christie), the play used the innovation of assigning the role of jury in the trial to the audience, with theatre-goers voting on whether Archer's character was innocent or guilty at the end of each night's performance. The trick of using a jury from the audience was previously used in 1934 by Ayn Rand in her play "Night of January 16th". Archer would attend his real trial during the day and be judged in his fictional trial at the theatre in the evening.

The real life trial began on 30 May 2001. On 19 July, 2001, Lord Archer was found guilty of perjury and perverting the course of justice at the 1987 trial. He was sentenced to a total of four years' imprisonment by Mr Justice Potts. The most ironic aspect of his trial was that he had fabricated the alibi for the wrong date. Archer never spoke during the trial. Ted Francis was found not guilty of perverting the course of justice.

Archer's mother died on 11 July 2001 aged 87, and he was released for the day on 21 July to attend the funeral.

Archer was originally sent to Belmarsh Prison, but was moved to the category C Wayland Prison in Norfolk on 9 August 2001, and to HMP North Sea Camp, an open prison in October 2001. From there he was let out to work at the Theatre Royal in Lincoln, England, and was allowed occasional home visits. Reports in the media, which showed a continuing interest in him, claimed that he had been abusing this privilege by attending lunches with friends, and in September 2002 he was transferred to Lincoln Prison for a month.

In October 2002 Archer repaid the Daily Star the £500,000 damages he had received in 1987, as well as legal costs of £1 million (under the British legal system, losing plaintiffs must repay the defendant's legal costs). That month, he was suspended from Marylebone Cricket Club for seven years for his behaviour.

On 21 July 2003, he was released on licence, after serving half of his sentence, from HMP Hollesley Bay, Suffolk. In September 2003, the government announced reforms that would prevent convicted criminals from serving in the House of Lords; supporters argued that other peers sent to prison, such as Lord Kagan, were not stripped of their titles. Those reforms have yet to be implemented.

Many of Lord Archer's friends remained loyal to him. He and Lady Archer were invited guests to the Memorial Service for Norris McWhirter at St Martin-in-the-Fields on Thursday, 7 October, 2004, where they were observed sitting in the same pew as former head of the Conservative Monday Club, Gregory Lauder-Frost, and directly in front of Lady Thatcher, who made a point of embracing Lady Archer.

In the 2006 book 'The Wonga Coup' by Adam Roberts, Archer was accused of being one of the backers of the 2004 coup in Equatorial Guinea. Records siezed by prosecutors in the trial following the failed coup attempt show a bank transfer was made from the account of a 'J.H. Archer' into the account of Simon Mann. Archer has denied that it was him, although those are his initials.

On 17 September 2005 Archer was appearing at an event in Manchester for the 10th birthday of Kirsty Howard to raise money for the Francis House Children's Hospice. Someone shouted out "Monica". Archer looked up and had a bucket of cold porridge thrown over him. The culprit fled.

In November 2005, after being expelled from the Conservative Party in 2000, he made a bid to rejoin the party. The Independent newspaper reported of the "coincidence" that his bid to rejoin the Conservative party, and the ensuing publicity, coincided with details of his forthcoming book being released.

On 26 February 2006, on Andrew Marr's Sunday AM programme, Archer said he had no interest in returning to politics: he would pursue his writing career instead.

In Early 2007, he became the initial target of an e-petition to 10 Downing St to have his peerage removed as a result of his conviction for perjury.

Themes found in his work

Archer seems to be a big fan of interweaving characters; Kane and Abel is the obvious example, where two men, born on different sides of the world in completely opposite surroundings eventually meet in stories which span a lifetime; similar situations occur in Sons of Fortune, Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less and The Fourth Estate. He uses this device with heroes and villains too, as found in As the Crow Flies and First Among Equals.

Archer very often takes his characters from the upper classes of the UK or New England, discussing mannerisms and sensitivities from that layer of society. The majority of his works are set in the USA, though his characters tend to use British grammar.

His "non-epic" works (A Matter of Honour, a chase story, and Shall We Tell the President?, a detective thriller) are usually set within a much shorter timeframe and have fewer characters.

Art also is a theme in his works. Several novels and short stories have had a focus around works of art. A Matter of Honour focused around a work of art, plus the secret it held. First Among Equals also featured a work of art as plot device. Sons of Fortune had one main character collecting "Painted Mistresses", and As the Crow Flies featured an art expert, and collector of art as main characters. In Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less the victim of the con game buys a fake Van Gogh picture as one of the schemes to get even with the man the protagonists were defrauded by. A Van Gogh painting is at the centre of False Impression while the short story '"Not for Sale" is centred around a talented young artist having her first exhibition. Additionally, the short story "Chalk and Cheese" centred on the differing lives of two brothers, one of whom was an artist, and the other of whom was an art collector. Archer's love of art was revealed in his Prison Diaries, where he talked about how he tried to buy a Botero from another inmate.

Template:Spoiler

The other prevailing theme among Archer's works is his twist endings. It happens in his thrillers, his novels, and his short stories. For example, in his short story "Just Good Friends" the first-person narrative describes somebody who went home with some guy she met in a pub and stayed with him ever since. Her own life was that of abandonment by her mother (who only left her a fur coat), impregnation by somebody who never saw her again, her children taken away by the authorities, and never telling anything to the guy she is living with. She also doesn't respond to the alarm clock, letting the guy get up and fix food for them. Only in the end do we realize the narrator is a female cat. Several years before the publication of this story, Archer judged a short story competition which was won by Kathleen Burnett with a story which shares many features with "Just Good Friends". Archer said it was a "genuinely original idea." When Burnett complained to the publishers, they said there was no copyright in an idea .

Bibliography

Jeffrey Archer in popular culture

In the 1990 film Arachnophobia Dr. Sam Metcalf's wife is seen reading a Jeffrey Archer novel in bed just before Dr. Metcalf is fatally bitten by a spider.

References

  1. In order, the youngest MPs were: 1. Bernadette Devlin (born April 23, 1947); 2. Christopher Ward (born December 26, 1942); 3. Les Huckfield (born April 7, 1942); 4. John Ryan (born April 30, 1940), 5. Jeffrey Archer (born April 15, 1940).
  2. "The rise and fall of Jeffrey Archer". The Guardian. July 19, 2001.
  3. ^ "Star demands £2.2m from Archer". BBC News. July 19, 2001. Cite error: The named reference "DTI" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  4. "Coghlan killer gets life". BBC News. July 6, 2001.
  5. ^ "Archer's share deal under scrutiny again". The Guardian. October 30, 1999.
  6. "Disgraced Archer jettisoned by Tories". Guardian Unlimited. Tuesday 23 November 1999. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  7. "Cameron snubs Archer's Lords bid". BBC. November 27, 2005.
  8. "Archer 'may vote in Lords again'". BBC. 26 February 2006.
  9. "Archer and Kathleen Burnett's story". The Guardian.

Crick, Michael. Jeffrey Archer: Stranger than Fiction. ISBN 0-241-13360-2.

External links

Conservative Party conference" - October 7 1993.

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Archer-Peerage/

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded bySir Cyril Osborne Member of Parliament for Louth
1969–1974 		Succeeded byMichael Brotherton
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