By Annie Domini
Jeffrey Archer, British writer and politician synonymous with pot-boilers, page-three scandals and perjury, but also page-turners that were among the biggest publishing blockbusters of all times, has died at 86. Archer was a household name in India, and incidentally sold more copies his books here than in his home turf, the UK, owing to the sheer number of Indian readers of his English-language thrillers and high-octane political family dramas, hanging on to every word of the prolific author printed in cheap pirated paperbacks sold on every Indian city’s footpaths and traffic intersections.
The author of Kane and Abel, The Prodigal Daughter, Not A Penny More, Not Penny Less, First Among Equals, the Clifton Chronicles, had sold over 340 million copies of his books worldwide, firmly earning a place in the pantheon of all-time greats, that includes Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare and JK Rowling, in the matter of sales figures if not literary merit.
Archer was an arch-dabbler in multiple things before he became a global rockstar of potboilers, and had, as per innumerable reports, a distinct talent for lying on record. Questions have been raised on Archer’s records submitted to even the University of Oxford where he spent a few years trying to earn a degree, but really excelling at athletics and other sports, including cricket. Archer once described himself as the ‘Sachin Tendulkar of England’.
Archer became a Conservative MP at 27 and once served as the Tory party’s deputy chair, but his political stint was rocked by a number of scandals including lying on oath, and even a sleazy accusation of soliciting a ‘vice girl’ as per a British tabloid. He was a peer of the realm, that is a member of the Uk House of Lords until he retired in 2024, taking little interest in active politics, beyond a headline or two of his quips.
A life full of salacious gossips, spicy headlines, a “defective moral compass” as per the BBC, and many ups and downs, Archer remained a paperback heartthrob of multiple generations, rebuilding his life many times over despite his scandalous reputation for falsehoods, including lying about his own father’s non-existent military career.
In fact, Archer’s first novel was written after a particularly onerous bankruptcy and slew of litigations that halted his career as a promising young Tory MP. Archer went on to occupy 14 years and many months on the Sunday Times bestseller list and over five years in the New York Times bestseller lists, spending half a decade of a writer career that would be the envy of his peers in the chaotic and bustling publishing scene of London and New York.
Despite a colourful personal life, Archer was a phenomenally committed writer, who never missed a deadline. The Guardian quotes Kate Elton, Archer’s long-time editor: “Archer was the master story-teller and an editor’s dream – hardworking and utterly committed to completing draft after draft to get every word as perfect as possible, and a true champion of the team nature of great publishing.”
It seems fitting then that a Twitter user remarked that for Indians, Jeffrey Archer was the Chetan Bhagat before Chetan Bhagat was even born, tugging at the heartstrings many a heartbroken fan. Funnily enough, Archer once bitterly complained about Bollywood filmmakers being “inspired by his books”, such as Not A Penny More and Kane and Abel, branding the Hindi film industry as “thieves”.
Yet, he was also smitten with India and the sheer number of sales that his books saw in the country, prompting a bitter-sweet relationship. To partially circumvent the gnawing issue of piracy (which incidentally made him the paperback superstar in India), Archer’s publishers took to launching the India editions of his books a few days before the UK and US editions were launched, which both intrigued and elated the author.
Archer was also spotted in a memorable cameo in the superhit English comedy Bridget Jones’ Diary (2001), along with Salman Rushdie, where their self-flagellating personas came sharply into view. Archer was famously filmed being mock-offended when an underconfident chubby intern at a publishing house (played by Renne Zellwegger) declares the fictional book in the film to be greatest book of the twentieth century, and then fumbling while apologizing to Rushdie and Lord Archer by saying “yours is very good too”. The scene garnered a cult following within literary and movie comedy circuits.
Almost as if he was himself writing his exit from the world of books, thrillers, dramas and intrigue, Archer died just one day before his new novel, Adam and Eve, was due to be launched. Archer had declared this one to be his last, the perfect conclusion to a long and illustrious career of penmanship, keeping young adults engaged in reading from the mid-1970s. If the adjective “unputdownable” was invented for a noun, it was the proper noun that was Jeffrey Howard Archer. (IPA Service)
