Jeffrey Archer

A matchless spinner of engrossing tales, Jeffrey Archer is a bestselling British novelist and former politician. After graduating from Oxford, Archer entered parliament as the MP for Louth in 1969. Forced to resign after a financial scandal left him bankrupt, he penned his debut novel Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less as a means to repay his creditors. The book’s worldwide success kick-started his career as an author and Archer went on to write numerous bestselling blockbusters, including Kane and Abel and First Among Equals; the latter focused on a quartet of impressionable new MPs, which drew on his own political experiences.

Archer returned to Westminster in the 1980s but his candidacy for London mayor in 1999 was cut short after he was convicted of perjury during a libel case twelve years previously. Sentenced to four years at Her Majesty’s Pleasure (of which he served two), Archer produced a trilogy of acclaimed Prison Diaries about his experience of incarceration.

In 2011 Archer embarked upon the seven volume Clifton Chronicles, which spanned the life and adventures of the eponymous Harry Clifton; the final instalment, This Was a Man, was published in 2016. In 2019, Archer produced Nothing Ventured, the opening volume of a new series featuring detective William Warwick, the hero of Harry Clifton’s fictional novels. This was followed by Hidden in Plain Sight in 2020 and Turn a Blind Eye and Over My Dead Body in 2021.