1998 photograph of Jeffrey Archer.
Jeffrey Howard Archer, Baron Archer of Weston-super-Mare (born 15 April 1940) is a former British politician and author who has written novels, short stories, plays and children's books.
In 1987, an article in the British tabloid newspaper the Daily Star accused Archer of having paid a prostitute. Archer sued the Daily Star for libel. He won the case and was awarded ₤50,000 in damages, money that Archer would repay in 2002 along with interest and legal fees amounting to a total of ₤1.3 million. In 1999, while Archer was campaigning to be the first elected Mayor of London, it was revealed that he had lied during the 1987 libel trial. Archer was found guilty of perjury and perverting the course of justice and sentenced to four years in prison. The conviction also brought Archer's career as an elected politician to an end. Archer served time in four different prisons between July 19, 2001 and July 21, 2003. He wrote three non-fiction books about his time in prison and also drew on his experiences as a prisoner in writing some of his later short stories.
Works[]
Kane and Abel trilogy[]
- Kane and Abel (1979)
- The Prodigal Daughter (1982)
- Shall We Tell the President? (1977, revised 1982)
The Clifton Chronicles[]
- Only Time Will Tell (2011)
- The Sins of the Father (2012)
- Best Kept Secret (2013)
- Be Careful What You Wish For (2014)
- Mightier Than the Sword (2015)
- Cometh the Hour (2016)
- This Was a Man (2016)
William Warwick series[]
- Nothing Ventures (2019)
- Hidden in Plain Sight (2020)
- Turn a Blind Eye (2021)
- Over My Dead Body (2021)
- Next in Line (2022)
- Traitor's Gate (2023)
Other novels[]
Jeffrey Archer at a book festival in Oslo, Norway in 2012.
- Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less (1976)
- First Among Equals (1984)
- A Matter of Honour (1986)
- As the Crow Flies (1991)
- The Fourth Estate (1996)
- The Eleventh Commandment (1998)
- Sons of Fortune (2002)
- False Impression (2005)
- A Prisoner of Birth (2008)
- Paths of Glory (2009)
- Heads You Win (2016)
Short story anthologies[]
- A Quiver Full of Arrows (1980)
- A Twist in the Tale (1988)
- Fools, Knaves and Heroes, Great Political Short Stories (1991)
- Twelve Red Herrings (1994)
- The Collected Short Stories (1997)
- To Cut a Long Story Short (2000)
- Cat O'Nine Tales (2006)
- And There Hangs a Tale (2010)
- The New Collected Short Stories (2011)
- The Jeffrey Archer Short Story Challenge Collection (2013)
- Four Warned (2014)
- It Can't Be October Already (2017)
- Tell Tale (2017)
- The Short, the Long and the Tall (2020)
Plays[]
- Beyond Reasonable Doubt (1987)
- Exclusive (1989)
- The Accused (2000)
Children's books[]
- By Royal Appointment (1980)
- Willy Visits the Square World (1980)
- Willy and the Killer Kipper (1981)
- The First Miracle (1993)
Non-fiction[]
Prison diaries[]
- 1 Hell - Bellmarsh (2002)
- 2 Purgatory - Wayland (2003)
- 3 Heaven - North Sea Camp (2004)