Jeffrey Archer has died. The British novelist, who sold over 300 million books and also found time to become an MP, a peer and a convicted perjurer, was 86.
HarperCollins announced it on Monday. He died suddenly, at home, the publisher said, and peacefully, in a gap between writing sessions. Nothing has been said about the cause. His final novel, Adam & Eve, went on sale the next morning.
Less than 24 hours before he died, Archer was on stage at the Leicester Square Theatre talking to broadcaster Gyles Brandreth. The house was sold out. Hundreds of readers came, and he signed copies of the new book for them, HarperCollins told the BBC.
Brandreth said afterwards that Archer had told him this one really would be the last.
There was more to come. He was booked for the Cheltenham Literature Festival this coming weekend, and he had been doing radio interviews all week to push the book.
He had said it first in January. HarperCollins announced Adam & Eve then, and Archer, who was 85 at the time, explained that somewhere near the end of the first draft he realised he "could never hope to equal it again." Short stories might still happen. Novels would not. The idea had come to him a few years earlier, he said, and the research was heavier than for anything he had written before.
It also landed in his debut's 50th year. Pan Macmillan brought out an anniversary edition of Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less in August.
Close to his death he told the Telegraph he was "very nervous" about it being the final one.
The story starts on Armistice Day, 1918, with two babies born on the same day. Adam is a shepherd's son. Eve is the daughter of an earl. It moves from Norfolk to the beaches at Dunkirk and builds towards one night in September 1940.
Kate Elton, who runs HarperCollins UK and edited him, called Archer "the master storyteller and an editor's dream." The whole company was devastated, she said, and she described him as a friend.
Archer was born in London in 1940 and grew up in Weston-super-Mare. At Oxford he won an athletics blue, and in 1966 he ran the 100 yards in 9.6 seconds for Great Britain. Three years later, at 29, he was elected Conservative MP for Louth, one of the youngest in the Commons.
By 1974 he was out. A financial scandal had left him close to bankrupt, so he wrote a novel. Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less appeared in 1976 and sold. Then came Kane and Abel in 1979, two men from opposite worlds locked in a rivalry for decades, which went past 34 million copies and became a 1985 CBS miniseries.
Politics kept calling. He became deputy chairman of the Conservative Party in 1985 and was gone from the job within about a year, after another scandal.
In 1987 he sued the Daily Star over a story claiming he had paid a woman for sex. He won. That victory is what eventually sank him: in 2001 he was convicted of perjury and perverting the course of justice over the case, and sentenced to four years. He served two.
By then he had been a life peer since 1992. Prison turned into a three-volume diary.
Reviewers were often rough on him. Robert McCrum, writing in 2009, went after the prose in terms that still get quoted. Readers shrugged. The books ran into 47 languages and more than 100 countries, and the Clifton Chronicles and William Warwick series kept selling long after his political career was finished.
He also raised a lot of money for charity as an amateur auctioneer, and ran the 2004 London Marathon.
Priti Patel, the Conservative MP, posted on Monday night that he had raised millions for good causes and was a dear and loyal friend.
Archer leaves his wife, Dame Mary Archer, a scientist he met at Oxford, and their two sons. They had marked 60 years of marriage this year, according to HarperCollins.
No funeral details have been announced. Adam & Eve is in shops now.
