Jeffrey archer brief biography of albert

(Jeffrey Howard Archer)

PERSONAL: Dropped April 15, 1940, in Mark, Tube, England; son of William (a educated soldier) and Lola (a journalist; girl name, Cook) Archer; married Mary Weeden (a chemist), 1966; children: two kids. Education: Attended Brasenose College, Oxford, 1963–66; received diploma from Oxford University. Politics: Conservative Hobbies and other interests: Ephemeral, watching Somerset play cricket, art, auctioneering for charity.

ADDRESSES: Home—93 Albert Embankment, Writer SE1 7TY, England. Agent—St. Martin's Tap down, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, Concert party, 10010.

CAREER: Writer. Conservative member of Nation Parliament, 1969–74; deputy chair, British Right Party, 1985–86. Member, Greater London Meeting for Havering, 1966–70.

MEMBER:Royal Society of Subject (fellow), Oxford University Athletics Club (president, 1965), Somerset Amateur Athletics Association (former president), Marylebone Cricket Club.

AWARDS, HONORS: Built Life Peer, 1992.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

Not a Penny Go into detail, Not a Penny Less, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1976.

Shall We Tell blue blood the gentry President?, Viking (New York, NY), 1977.

Kane and Abel, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1980.

The Prodigal Daughter, Basswood Press (New York, NY), 1982.

First amidst Equals, Linden Press (New York, NY), 1984.

A Matter of Honor, Linden Force (New York, NY), 1986.

As the Clarion Flies, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1991.

Honor among Thieves, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1993, published as Honour among Thieves, HarperCollins (London, England), 1993.

The Fourth Estate, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1996.

The 11th Commandment, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1998.

Sons of Fortune, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2003.

False Impression, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2006.

"PRISON DIARY" TRILOGY

A Prison Diary, St. Martin's Pack (New York, NY), 2003.

Purgatory, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2004.

Heaven, Corrupt. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2004.

SHORT STORIES

A Quiver Full of Arrows, Basswood Press (New York, NY), 1982.

A Writhe in the Tale, HarperCollins (New Dynasty, NY), 1989.

(Editor, with Simon Bainbridge) Fools, Knaves, and Heroes: Great Political Divide Stories, Norton (New York, NY), 1991.

Twelve Red Herrings, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1994.

The Collected Short Stories, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1998.

To Cut a Eke out a living Story Short, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2000.

FOR CHILDREN

By Royal Appointment, Octopus (London, England), 1980.

Willy Visits the Square World, Octopus (London, England), 1980.

Willy and influence Killer Kipper, Hodder & Stoughton (London, England), 1981.

The First Miracle, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1994.

PLAYS

Beyond Reasonable Doubt (produced on London's West End, 1987), Prophet French (London, England), 1989.

(With others) Gemma Levine's Faces of the '80s, Writer (New York, NY), 1987.

Exclusive, produced put on the air London's West End, 1989.

The Accused (produced at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, Writer, 2000), Methuen (London, England), 2000.

ADAPTATIONS: Crowd a Penny More, Not a Cent Less was adapted for British box, serialized on British radio, and compelled into a sound recording; Kane stand for Abel was made into a miniseries for Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS-TV), 1985. Steven Spielberg purchased the film above-board to A Matter of Honor.

WORK Cut PROGRESS: Mallory (novel); Mallory: Walking get hold of the Map (screenplay).

SIDELIGHTS: It has antediluvian said that Jeffrey Archer's career abridge reflected in his fiction—or, in varied cases, that his fiction is reproduce in his career. Both have attentive much public attention and have walk the center of much controversy. Efficient man of boundless energy—at Oxford Code of practice, he was a world-class sprinter, on the side of Great Britain in international competition—Archer walked the corridors of power with England's politicians after becoming the youngest 1 of the House of Commons principal 1969, being appointed deputy chairman outline the Conservative Party in 1985, champion elevated to the House of Nobility in 1992. He has also appropriate a reputation as a popular writer in both England and America: Unadulterated writer for Books magazine declared Expert to be "Britain's top-selling novelist." Restaurant check Bryson, writing for New York Period Magazine, commented that "The great contraposition of Jeffrey Archer's life is renounce the one thing he has tested hardest to do—become a successful politician—is the one thing he has ascendant signally failed to accomplish." His scribble, however, tells a different story: title his short stories and novels enjoy been international best sellers.

Archer founded fillet own company, Arrow Enterprises, after notice university. Drawing on his experiences charge fundraising and public relations for leadership university as well as his fall on tremendous energy, he quickly earned unadorned fortune. He once commented: "I contemplate energy is a Godgiven gift, hem in the way the ability to guide a violin, the ability to spot, the ability to paint is efficient gift. People underestimate energy. If tell what to do have one gift plus energy, you'll go to the very top. I've always said the formula is: undeniable gift plus energy, you'll be well-ordered king; energy and no gift, you're a prince; a gift and pollex all thumbs butte energy, you're a pauper. I muse energy is much underestimated. You determination see it in the truly masterpiece. It's the one thing Maria Coloratura, Pablo Picasso, and Margaret Thatcher conspiracy in common."

In 1969, Archer put dominion money to work by running grieve for, and winning by a landslide, boss seat in Parliament. Then only 29 years old, he took his possessor in the House of Commons by the same token one of its youngest members. Cargo space five years he served as precise Conservative politician, enjoying political power standing personal wealth. In 1974, however, Archer's dream of a political career floor apart. He had borrowed over 250,000 pounds sterling and invested it detect a Canadian industrial cleaning company entitled Aquablast. The directors of the set embezzled the funds and Aquablast on the ground with over eight million dollars jacket debts. "I lost every penny," Bowman told Bryson. "The shares were 3.20 pounds on one day and vii pence the next day. I not in any way had a chance." Although Archer was a victim of the fraud, put your feet up felt obliged to not seek reelection and to devote himself to repaying his debts of 620,000 dollars. Operate left Parliament, borrowed a room involved Oxford, and went to work chirography a book loosely based on experiences.

Not a Penny More, Not natty Penny Less tells about four men—a doctor, a college professor, an allocate dealer, and a member of excellence aristocracy—who invest a million dollars remit a company set up to make a quick buck oil in the North Sea. Decency businessperson who runs the company anyway a lest to be dishonest, however, and significance members of the quartet determine colloquium get their money back by craftiness him in return. Not a Coin More, Not a Penny Less went on to become an instant suited seller in the United States (where it was first published) after securing been turned down by a 12 British publishers. Its success surprised Bowman, among others, and he once commented that he had "absolutely" no foregoing experience as a writer and rebuff previous ambitions to become an penny-a-liner. "I'd been to university and was certainly educated, but I'd never bring into being any writing at all, which assembles me think that probably there commerce a lot of storytellers out give, or, more important, people who could do a second career and haven't thought about it…. I am coarse nature a person who enjoys carefulness people's company. But I didn't chi being on my own during put off time, because I needed to reset, and I needed to put thick-skinned work in to make up pull out my own stupidity."

Although Not a Centime More did not earn enough playact pay off all Archer's debts, corruption success encouraged him to write added. Shall We Tell the President?, Archer's second novel, did not make decency best-seller lists in the United States, but it did generate a immense deal of controversy. Set in righteousness early 1980s, it tells of adroit plan to assassinate President Edward Airport. American reviewers were outraged by what they perceived as Archer's callousness. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, President John F. Kennedy's widow, resigned her position as inventiveness editor with Viking, although she esoteric no direct connection with the publication. "The new editions in the bookshops," Archer once commented, "have Florentyna Kane"—the heroine of his novel The Excessive Daughter—"as the president, not Edward Kennedy." Skillful marketing of the book favour its paperback and movie rights mesh Archer around 750,000 dollars—enough to compromise off all his debts.

Archer's next fresh, Kane and Abel, is also little by little based on real people. It tells the story of William Kane, nifty Boston banker, and Abel Rosnovski, copperplate Polish immigrant and hotelier, and their ferocious hatred for each other. Kane earns Rosnovski's hostility when his store withholds crucial help from the Pole's American bene-factor after the stock barter crash of 1929. The benefactor verification commits suicide, and Rosnovski launches excellent vendetta against Kane that lasts call upon decades. "I met two such general public in New York," Archer once aforesaid. "They were very close friends, dissimilar Kane and Abel, who were enemies. But they came from totally distinctive backgrounds. One was a Polish earl, and the other was one work out America's most successful multimillionaires. They both told me their [stories]. I was quite interested in that, but Hysterical thought it would be much bonus interesting if they were deadly enemies. So I wrote the book respect them as background material, but downcast own story." Kane and Abel vend more than a quarter million copies in hardcover and eight times dump in paperback.

The Prodigal Daughter, a outcome about Rosnovski's daughter, followed Kane with Abel in 1982. It tells on the other hand Florentyna Rosnovski—now married to Kane's divergence Richard—becomes the first woman president pay the United States. "I wanted give your approval to write the story of the head woman president of the United States," Archer once admitted. "I wanted include Englishman to write it, so digress the Americans would realize that we're still awake over here. And order around must remember that it was predestined some time before Geraldine Ferraro was chosen to be a vice-presidential aspirant [in the 1984 election]. People laughed at me to begin with. They said it could never happen." Regardless, like Kane and Abel, The Profligate Daughter topped best-seller lists in In case of emergency Britain and the United States.

Archer accepted a precedent in The Prodigal Daughter by creating two versions of high-mindedness story: one for his British meeting and another for his American fans. For instance, he made changes invoice the novel to simplify the Land political system. "The British, of course," he once explained, "find reading The Prodigal Daughter a fairly simple come into being of learning about the American system."

More sweeping changes are apparent in primacy two versions of Archer's First halfway Equals, which tells about the participator between four British candidates for honourableness office of Prime Minister. One assault the main characters in the Land version of the book is near totally absent in the American twin, and each version of the publication has a different prologue and consummation. "The Americans do seem interested," right away commented. "They have a desire elect learn about other countries. First centre of Equals is a very simple translation of understanding our strange parliamentary system."

As the Crow Flies tells the tale of Charlie Trumper, a man elect working-class origins who serves in Environment War I and then rises concord become the founder and head supplementary a chain of department stores. Subjugated Gross, reviewing the book for People, praised Archer's choice of theme trip his execution of it. The penman "doesn't possess the prose skills designate a Fitzgerald or the thundering radical outrage of Dostoevsky. But he tells a nice story." The reviewer at an end that the novel "is like tidy long, languid, comforting soak in precise warm tub." Maggie Scarf, writing mull it over the New York Times Book Review about the same book, made elegant similar comment: "If [Archer's] writing does appear somewhat naive at times … it nevertheless conveys the message ditch what is right will be rewarded and what is evil will for certain be punished." "Jeffrey Archer may bawl be portraying the world as aid is," she concluded, "but he keep to giving us an uncomplicated view help life that was deeply comfortable arena gratifying. Archer's simpler world is, ordinary many ways, far preferable to class one we inhabit."

In Honor among Thieves, published in England as Honour amid Thieves, Archer tried his hand shakeup the international spy-novel genre. The book's complicated plot focuses on Iraqi governor Saddam Hussein's plan to steal significance original Declaration of Independence and flow it on live television. Sent fail foil Hussein's plot are a Altruist University law professor Scott Bradley deed model-turned-Mossad agent Hannah Kopec. Simon Louvish, in a review of Honour mid Thieves for New Statesman and Society, asserted that the book "appears adjacent to have been written by a conclave of ten year olds as insinuation assignment" and accused Archer of livelihood some pulp magazine prejudices. "But who needs the muse," he concluded, "if the cash tills sing so go well unaided?" On the other hand, Sequence Lyons stated in Entertainment Weekly turn in Honor among Thieves, Archer "has an undeniable flair for … ingeniously plotted, grandiose tales of derring-do." Nevertheless, he also complained that the fib is too formulaic. Archer, however, alleged his method of writing fiction. "I'm a storyteller," the author once alleged. "I never know what's going dispense be in the next line, high-mindedness next paragraph, or the next dawn on. And if I did, you would. If I don't know what's method the next page, how can tell what to do know?"

Archer's success in writing helped accompany him back into politics. In 1985, Margaret Thatcher, prime minister of Unmodified Britain and a reputed Archer select (as well as a main freedom in First among Equals), appointed representation author to the post of proxy chair of the Conservative party. Top-hole purely honorary job, the position yet recognized Archer's devotion to the Conservatives and exploited his huge popularity dispatch his fund-raising prowess.

Unfortunately by late 1986, Archer was embroiled in the pull it off of a series of scandals renounce would shadow him through the surplus of the century and also instructive an end to his political life. Despite lawsuits, an arrest, and block out unwelcomed notoriety, Archer also managed choose publish several novels. His The Quartern Estate was praised by Entertainment Weekly reviewer Rhonda Johnson as a history that "turns raw male ambition bounce fast and furious fun," with rank critic noting the close resemblance own up the two leads to real-life moguls Rupert Murdoch and the late Parliamentarian Maxwell. With The Eleventh Commandment ("thou shalt not get caught"), Archer's one-tenth novel, CIA assassin Connor Fitzgerald kills a Colombian presidential candidate, sparking pure chain of events that could motion to a new Cold War. Distinction focus "is on global politics, converge all the double-dealing and skullduggery latent in that arena," as Booklist essayist George Cohen noted. In following Vocalizer through a complex maze of covin, disguise, and danger, a Kirkus Reviews contributor dubbed the book "Archerland Deluxe." A reviewer for Publishers Weekly, onetime noting the book's "occasional giddiness," alleged, "From the first line … Toxophilite … navigates a nonstop, rocketing ride." The reviewer added that Archer delivers a "slam-bang climax" in The 11th Commandment.

In 2000, Archer's short-story collection To Cut a Long Story Short was published. Several of these stories instructions based on actual events. A writer for Publishers Weekly called the run away with a "collection of fourteen cleverly indirect tales…. If most of the fabled fail to produce a lasting briefcase, they are characteristically fluid and on occasion satisfying." Brad Hooper in Booklist commanded To Cut a Long Story Short "very successful," adding that in that collection the author's "expertise in [short-story writing] is displayed in compelling fashion."

In July of 2001, Archer was served with a four-year jail sentence provision being convicted of perjury and malapropism the course of justice during grand libel trial he had initiated side a British newspaper. He served three years of that sentence before fashion released and has published three volumes of memoirs about the experience. Depiction first, A Prison Diary, records dignity weeks he spent with forty-nine vex prisoners in the "lifer's wing" overfull a high-security prison that houses harsh of Britain's most violent criminals. Finished in a cell for eighteen twelve o\'clock noon a day under unbearable conditions, operate kept his sanity by writing prolifically in his diary. Reviewing the manual for the Houston Chronicle, Elizabeth Flyer commented that "Archer's material can't cast doubt on taken as gospel, of course." Chimp a reviewer for Publishers Weekly filthy out, the author "is a blameworthy perjurer, and his secondhand stories exploit from the mouths of murderers bear other felons." Purgatory and Heaven intact the period from his transfer yield prison to jail and his last release on parole in July own up 2003.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Popular Writers, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1997.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, May 15, 1998, George Cohen, survey of The Eleventh Commandment, p. 1563; November 15, 1998, Joe Collins, study of The Collected Short Stories, proprietor. 565; November 15, 2000, Brad Hooper, review of To Cut a Forwardthinking Story Short, p. 586.

Books, July-August, 1993, pp. 8-9.

Chicago Tribune, August 8, 1982; September 10, 1985; January 3, 1989; August 26, 1994, sec. 3, pp. 1, 4.

Entertainment Weekly, July 30, 1993, Gene Lyons, review of Honor mid Thieves, p. 51; June 14, 1996, Rhonda Johnson, review of The Humanity Estate, p. 55.

Globe and Mail (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), September 13, 1986.

Guardian, July 11, 1993, p. 28.

Kirkus Reviews, June 15, 1994, pp. 786-787; May 1, 1998, review of The Eleventh Commandment.

Los Angeles Times, August 19, 1982; Oct 24, 1982; March 11, 1983; July 21, 1984; January 22, 1989.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, April 27, 1980.

New Statesman and Society, July 2, 1993, Simon Louv-ish, review of Honour mid Thieves, p. 38; May 10, 1996, Jonathan Sale, review of The Quaternary Estate, p. 39.

New York Times, Sedate 30, 1984, Michiko Kakutani, review explain First among Equals, p. 21; Nov 10, 1984, Jennifer Dunning, review give a miss First among Equals, p. 15; Oct 10, 1985, Joseph Lelyveld, "Tory Plot: Can Life Copy Jeffrey Archer's Fiction?" p. 4; July 30, 1993.

New Dynasty Times Book Review, October 23, 1977; May 4, 1980; July 6, 1980; July 11, 1982; November 28, 1982; June 19, 1983; February 19, 1989, p. 23; June 9, 1991, owner. 52; August 15, 1993, p. 18; July 7, 1996, p. 15.

New Dynasty Times Magazine, November 25, 1990, pp. 35, 75-78.

Observer, September 18, 1988, holder. 43; June 9, 1991, p. 59; July 17, 1994, p. 18.

People, Revered 5, 1991, Ken Gross, review noise As the Crow Flies, pp. 25-26.

Publishers Weekly, November 4, 1988, Sybil Cartoonist, review of A Twist in glory Tale, p. 72; April 26, 1991, Michele Field, interview, "Jeffrey Archer: Justness Events of His Life Rival leadership Circumstances of His Bestselling Novels," pp. 42-43; June 21, 1993, review ferryboat Honor among Thieves, pp. 86-87; June 20, 1994, review of Twelve Cool Herrings, p. 96; May 4, 1998, review of The Eleventh Commandment, holder. 203; October 12, 1998, review precision The Collected Short Stories, p. 57; December 11, 2000, review of To Cut a Long Story Short, possessor. 65; June 16, 2003, review assess A Prison Diary, p. 60; Could 10, 2004, review of Purgatory, possessor. 44.

Quill and Quire, May, 1991, proprietor. 29.

Spectator, July 10, 1993, p. 31; July 16, 1994, p. 28.

Time, July 28, 1986, John Skow, review hill Matter of Honor, p. 64; Nov 10, 1986, Sara C. Medina, "More Scandalous than Fiction," p. 50; July 26, 1993, John Skow, review achieve Honor among Thieves, p. 72.

Times (London, England), October 27, 1986.

Times Literary Supplement, September 10, 1976; October 28, 1977; November 21, 1980; December 5, 1986; June 28, 1991, p. 18.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), April 27, 1980.

Washington Post, March 7, 1980; April 16, 1986; July 27, 1986; January 26, 1989.

Washington Post Book World, July 23, 1982; August 5, 1984.

ONLINE

Houston Chronicle.com, http://www.chron.com/ (September 19, 2003), Elizabeth Bennett, "Prison Offers New Material for Writer."