If I wasn’t top dog, I think I would pack it in
Jeffrey Archer
When I first encountered Jeffrey Archer, 55 years ago, I was told he was a phenomenon. I was 13 at the time and Jeffrey was 20. He came to my prep school in Kent to coach athletics and our headmaster, Mr Burton, introduced him as “the most remarkable young man” he had come across in a lifetime of teaching. Mr Burton, a doughty war veteran with a good heart and a gammy leg, was blown away by Jeffrey. We all were. Why does Jeffrey think that was? “Well, I’d captained England school athletics and won a gold in the relay for Somerset. I thought I was going to run for Britain.” He grins at me. “I had the self-confidence and ignorance of youth.” He bursts out laughing. “You have to live 50 more years to realise how ignorant and stupid you really are.”
I have come to see my old athletics coach in the run-up to the publication of his latest novel, This Was a Man, the grand finale of his Clifton Chronicles series. We are meeting in his famous, fabulous, art-filled penthouse apartment overlooking the Houses of Parliament and the Thames. (His other homes include the Old Vicarage, Grantchester, and a villa in Majorca.)
Jeffrey is 76, his face is lined and he has come through prostate cancer, but it seems he’s still running hard. “I’m like a 17-yearold in the blocks. Lee Child’s new book is published this month, too. Ten o’clock on November 10 – that’s when we will find out who is number one on the New York Times bestseller list. I want to be number one!” He is thumping the armrest on the sofa, laughing, but he is in earnest. “If I wasn’t number one, I think I’d pack up. Silver medallists don’t get remembered.”
Jeffrey will be remembered, of course, as much for his chequered career as his bestsellers. Author, athlete, charity fundraiser, MP, deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, peer, perjurer, prisoner, philanthropist, he has led at least nine lives and sailed pretty close to the wind in several of them. He only got into writing because of one of his scrapes.
In 1974, an unfortunate business deal and near-bankruptcy forced him to stand down as MP for Louth and the experience inspired his first novel, Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less. Fourteen publishers turned it down. The initial print run was just 3,000 copies. But Jeffrey kept going, and in 1979, with his third book, Kane and Abel, he hit the jackpot. It remains his all-time bestseller, with 34 million copies sold, nestling between War and Peace and To Kill a Mocking Bird on the Google list of the most successful novels in history.
Jeffrey makes no claims to be a Tolstoy or a Harper Lee. He’s a storyteller and a grafter. “Never underestimate what you can achieve with hard work,” he says. On writing days, he’s at his desk from 6am to 8am with pen, paper and a glass of water. Then it’s breakfast and a bath before another two hours at the desk, lunch and a quick nap. Two more hours in the afternoon and a walk, then a final two hours rereading what he’s written. In 50 days he can complete a book – “the first draft, that is. Fourteen drafts follow. There are no shortcuts.”
What explains his success? “Energy!” he booms. “It’s the biggest gift of all. If you have talent and energy, you can be a king. If you have energy and no talent, you can be a prince. If you have talent and no energy, you’ll be a pauper. If anyone beats me, it’s because they are more talented. Look at J K Rowling. Compared with her, we’re all pedalling in the back straight.”
And who has taught him most in the 55 years since we first met? “Three extraordinary women,” he declares, without hesitation. He gestures towards a framed photograph of Margaret Thatcher. “She’d be up at four and go on until midnight. Work, work, work. Mary used to say, ‘She’s a very serious woman,’ and she was.”
Mary, Jeffrey’s wife, a scientist specialising in solar energy and now chairman of trustees for the Science Museum, is quite a serious woman, too. There are lots of framed photographs of her in evidence – with Jeffrey, with the Queen, collecting her DBE for services to the NHS. It’s often said that Mary is the person who has given Jeffrey his credibility, that if she has managed to stick by him for all these years he must have something going for him.
That’s probably true, but I reckon that Jeffrey has given Mary a good deal, too – and beyond the obvious: their two sons and the millionaire lifestyle. Jeffrey has provided Mary with access to people and opportunities that might not have come to other academics, and he introduced her to the worlds of theatre and art, about which he is passionate and knowledgeable.
Jeffrey beams as I say this and bounces on. “My mother, Lola, was the third great influence, of course. She was a councillor in Westonsuper-Mare.” He has photographs of her (in her council robes) on his desk and by his bedside. “She was chairman of the arts committee and an amateur opera singer. My father died when I was 11. Lola brought me up. She was uneducated, but she was clever. She got her O-levels and A-levels and her degree when she was an elderly woman.
“She was remarkable. She married again and adopted my black sister, Elizabeth. I went with my mother to choose the little girl she was going to adopt. I chose Elizabeth. I said, ‘We’ll have her,’ and we did. I love her very much.”
Perhaps being allowed as a young boy to select his own sister gave Jeffrey his sense of entitlement. Lola certainly let him have his own way. And he did, all his life, until that fateful day in July 2001, just after Lola’s death, when he was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment for perjury. What are his life’s regrets? “Not working harder at school. Not running in the Olympics. Not having a daughter. I worship women. Women make much better leaders than men. Within 30 years half of the world’s leaders will be women.” Does he regret his time in prison? “Beyond the obvious – the hurt to family it caused – no. Mary says prison’s made me gentler.” Others say it has been the making of him. He was always hugely generous and a powerhouse of positivity, but he is mellower now, less bombastic, more mindful of others. “Prison was a worthwhile experience,” he says. “Prison made me realise how privileged my life is.” He grins. “And I got five books out of it.”
“What was the best moment in your life?” “When Kane and Abel was number one in 17 countries.” “And the worst?” “In 2011, when I thought Mary was going to die of cancer. She didn’t die and she’s had the five-year allclear now, but that was the worst. I couldn’t bear it without her. Pray God I die first.”
“And when you do die, what will your famous last words be?”
He ponders for a moment. “My famous last words? ‘I think the next story begins … but I don’t know where it’s going.’ Will that do?”
‘Prison made me realise how privileged my life is. Mary says it’s made me gentler’