As many have observed, Jeffrey Archer, who has died aged 86, led a life as colourful as the plot in one of his novels. He was, at one time or other, a senior Conservative politician, a best-selling author, a peer of the realm, and a convicted perjurer. Possessed of huge drive, vast wealth and immense personal charm, Archer bounced back from disaster and, more than once, rebuilt a shattered life.
But for all his talents, he will be remembered as a man affected by a defective moral compass, whose public humiliation was entirely self-inflicted. Jeffrey Howard Archer was born in north London on 15 April 1940. Within two weeks, his parents moved to Weston-super-Mare in Somerset, where they bought a house from John Cleese's mother.
Archer's mother Lola was the first woman journalist on the weekly paper, the Weston Mercury. In later life, Archer insisted that his father William, who was some 40 years older than his mother, was a decorated hero of the First World War. In fact, he was a convicted fraudster who, according to a US newspaper, spent the war years conning people in New York.
In 1951, the young Archer went to Wellington School on the edge of Exmoor. Some people mistakenly assumed he had gone to the somewhat more prestigious Wellington College in Berkshire, and he did little to correct them. Archer's academic career was undistinguished, and he left school with three O-levels.
He did, however, embark on a fitness regime designed to improve his physique after his originally skinny frame led to taunts from fellow pupils. After school, he drifted. There was a brief spell in the army and then a short course in physical education in America.
On his return, he spent five months as a probationary constable in the Metropolitan Police, before quitting to become a physical training instructor at a small prep school in Hampshire. It was while holding a similar job at Dover College that his resume moved into the realms of fantasy. He styled himself Jeffrey Archer, FIFPC, BSc, leading people to assume he had obtained a degree during his time in the United States.
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