Publisher HarperCollins said the British novelist and former Conservative politician died at home on Monday, a day before the planned release of his last book, Adam and Eve.
Jeffrey Archer, the bestselling British novelist and former Conservative politician, has died at 86. HarperCollins said he died suddenly and peacefully at home on Monday, between writing sessions, a day before the global release of his final novel, Adam and Eve.
Archer sold more than 300 million books over five decades, according to his publisher, including Kane and Abel and the Clifton Chronicles. The Associated Press, citing HarperCollins, said he spent 14 years and five months on the Sunday Times bestseller lists and more than five years on the New York Times lists. He often set fiction in his home town of Wellington, Somerset.
His political career included a rise in the Conservative Party under Margaret Thatcher and appointment to the House of Lords in 1992 by John Major. He was jailed for perjury in 2001 after a jury found he had lied in a 1987 libel case against the Daily Star, in which he had been awarded £500,000. He was released in 2003 and remained in the Lords until retiring in 2024.
HarperCollins called him a master storyteller and said readers meant everything to him. The publisher said he had been at the Leicester Square Theatre on Sunday signing books with broadcaster Gyles Brandreth. Brandreth wrote that Archer had said the new novel was to be his last.
Archer is survived by his wife of 60 years, Dame Mary Archer, their two sons, two granddaughters and three grandsons, the publisher told the Associated Press.
People Sentiments Neutral
- HarperCollins described Archer as a master storyteller.
- Gyles Brandreth said Archer had called Adam and Eve his last novel.