Jeffrey Archer

Jeffrey Archer (1940-2026) was an English novelist and Conservative politician whose thrillers and family sagas, led by Kane and Abel, sold more than 300 million copies according to his website. He was born in Holloway, London, on 15 April 1940 and died suddenly at his home in London on 5 October 2026, aged 86.

He was Conservative MP for Louth from a 1969 by-election until 1974, when a failed investment left him close to bankruptcy. He turned to fiction: Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less, a caper drawing on his own losses, was published in 1976 by Doubleday in the United States and Jonathan Cape in London. Shall We Tell the President? followed in 1977. Kane and Abel (Hodder & Stoughton, 1979) had sold an estimated 34 million copies by 2009. Later books include The Prodigal Daughter (1982), First Among Equals (1984), A Prisoner of Birth (2008), the seven-volume Clifton Chronicles from Only Time Will Tell (2011) to This Was a Man (2016), and the William Warwick novels from 2019.

Archer was deputy chairman of the Conservative Party in 1985 and 1986 and became a life peer in 1992. In 2001 he was convicted of perjury and perverting the course of justice and sentenced to four years, being released in 2003; he published three volumes of prison diaries. His final novel, Adam and Eve, was published on 6 October 2026, the day after his death.

For collectors, the 1976 first editions of Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less and the 1979 Hodder & Stoughton Kane and Abel are the key early Archer titles.