In death, bestselling author Jeffrey Archer leaves ‘biggest market’ India bereft
Archer died on October 5 at his London home. He was 86. Adam & Eve, his last book, published a day after his death, was always meant to cap a writing career spanning 50 years.
Jeffrey Archer's books were often derided as commercial fiction and major literary prizes spurned him, but he enjoyed the sort of financial success that finer writers can only dream of. Photo: Wikipedia
It was a plot twist that could have been straight out of one of his clever little short stories. A day before his final novel was due to be published, writer and politician Jeffrey Archer passed away on October 5 at his London home overlooking the Thames and the British Parliament, aged 86. Adam & Eve, published a day later — on the exact 50-year anniversary of his writing career (his first book, Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less, was published by Jonathan Cape on September 9, 1976) — was explicitly intended to be his last book, capping off a half-century of writing, a career he embarked on only because he was going bankrupt.
Previously, Archer wrote on his website: “I’ve spent many happy hours over the past fifty years since writing Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less in 1976 (3,000 copies sold in hardback), Kane and Abel in 1979 (now in its 132nd reprint), and more recently, from 2018, The William Warwick series. However, Adam and Eve has now proved to be my most satisfying writing endeavour, and I can only hope you will feel the same way…I should have been Prime Minister, captain of the England cricket team, or won an Olympic gold for the hundred metres, but then we can all dream. As Marcel Proust reminded us: ‘We always end up doing the thing we’re second best at.’.”
A statement issued by his publisher read: “It is with great sadness that HarperCollins announces that bestselling author Jeffrey Archer, Lord Archer of Weston-Super-Mare, died suddenly and peacefully at home today, aged 86, between writing sessions.” Archer “spent a total of 14 years and five months on the Sunday Times bestseller lists and 5½ years on the New York Times bestseller lists, selling 300 million books in 119 countries in 49 languages”, the statement added.
A life of twists and turns
Archer churned out page turners that sold in the millions, but his own life was no less interesting than the books he wrote, full of twists and turns. His father, William Archer, was a bigamist and conman who impersonated his namesake, a deceased war medal holder. He later fled to the United States after being granted bail in a fraud case. Meanwhile, Jeffrey went to Oxford, where he excelled in athletics. He eventually moved into politics and became a Conservative Party MP in 1969, at the age of 29. In 1974, Archer lost all his money in a fraudulent investment scheme launched by a Canadian company called Aquablast and also ended up half a million pounds in debt.
Being bankrupt, he was ineligible to stand for Parliament and did not seek re-election that year. Instead, he wrote his first book, the aforementioned Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less, inspired by his own experience of near-bankruptcy. This kicked off an illustrious career as a writer of popular fiction.
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His most successful book, Kane and Abel, about the bitter rivalry of two men born on the same day, came in 1979. Archer also wrote several plays, short story collections and book series, notably The Clifton Chronicles, a multi-generational saga following the life of patriarch Harry Clifton from birth to death and The William Warwick novels, a crime thriller series. For the last decade and a half, he wrote the first draft of every book at Writer’s Block, his villa in Mallorca.
A meticulous wordsmith
He became deputy chairman of the Conservative Party in 1985. But had to resign a year later, after a story in the News of the World accused him of “paying for sex”. Another tabloid, Daily Star, did a follow-up story against which Archer filed a libel case in 1987, which he won, besides being awarded £500,000 in damages. In 1992 he was made a peer, the Baron Archer of Weston-super-Mare, in recognition of his fundraising efforts for Kurdish refugees in the wake of the Gulf War. In 1999, it was revealed that he had lied during the libel case and was sentenced in 2001 to four years’ imprisonment for perjury (he only had to serve half his sentence). This effectively ended his political career, but he retained his peerage.
Of course, he wrote and published a series of three prison diaries, recounting his experiences of the incarceration. If all this was not exciting enough, in 2004 the government of Equatorial Guinea accused him of financing a failed coup against it.
Archer, however, redeemed himself with his writing and will be remembered fondly by millions of his readers. He was a meticulous wordsmith, revising his books incessantly, and a disciplined one, writing two hours at a stretch by the clock.
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His last book, Adam & Eve, follows the lives of two babies born at the exact moment World War I ends on November 11, 1918; Eve, the daughter of an Earl desperate for an heir and Adam, a shepherd's son. The book underwent 20 handwritten drafts. Typical Archer fare, but, by his admission, his finest work.
Archer’s lasting legacy will be the art of writing the page turner, which he had perfected. As one of the pre-eminent practitioners of commercial storytelling, he understood the mechanics of popular fiction extremely well. His books are defined by strong, larger-than-life characters, riveting conflicts, tight plots, and chapters ending in cliffhangers which kept the reader hooked till the last page.
Although he is best known for his novels, which turned social and economic situations into fodder for dramatic fiction, his short stories deserve equal attention. A contemporary equivalent of O. Henry, his story collections like A Quiver Full of Arrows and A Twist in the Tale demonstrate his ability to construct stories around a single plot point while delivering a satisfying ending. His prose was functional and accessible, and perhaps a bit formulaic, but he knew how to tell a tale well, and aspiring writers will continue to learn from him well into the future.
The writer was immensely popular in India and called it his biggest market. Indeed, pirated copies of his books were rampant. To counter this, several of his books were released in India before being released in the UK or US. Although his eminently readable books were derided as commercial fiction and major literary prizes spurned him, he enjoyed the sort of financial success that finer writers can only dream of.
