Jeffrey Archer, born in 1940, is an English novelist and former politician whose life story out-plots most of his fiction. He was the Conservative MP for Louth from 1969 to 1974, left the Commons after coming close to bankruptcy, and rebuilt his fortunes with the pen: Kane and Abel, from 1979, remains one of the best-selling books in the world at an estimated 34 million copies, and his titles overall have sold more than 320 million.
The political career resumed and repeatedly combusted. Deputy chairman of the Conservative Party from 1985, he resigned over a newspaper’s claim that he had paid money to a prostitute, won substantial libel damages in 1987, was made a life peer in 1992, then abandoned his London mayoral candidacy in 1999 when it emerged he had lied in that earlier case. In 2001 he was sentenced to four years for perjury and perverting the course of justice, serving until 2003. He retired from the House of Lords in 2024.
None of it dented the readership. Whatever one makes of the man, the storyteller has never been in dispute.
13 hours and 24 minutes
