BESTSELLING author and former politician Lord Jeffrey Archer has died at the age of 86.
He between writing sessions at home on October 5,
The former Conservative’s , like Kane And Abel and Not A Penny More, Not A Penny Less, sold hundreds of millions of copies, with his publisher saying, “His readers meant everything to him.”
But his career was shadowed by that saw him for two years.
Archer’s troubles began in October 1986, when a newspaper published claims that the then-Tory deputy chairman had paid sex worker Monica Coghlan £2,000 in a London hotel scandal.
Archer denied paying for sex, claiming he was simply arranging financial assistance through a third party to help Coghlan leave the country and avoid press harassment.
He resigned his party post but launched libel action against the newspaper to clear his name.
When the libel trial reached the High Court in 1987, Archer’s defence presented personal diaries showing he was dining with friends (including then-personal assistant Angela Peppiatt) on the evening in question.
Archer won the lawsuit and was awarded £500,000 in damages, as well as legal costs against the newspaper.
His political standing was restored, and in 1992, he was made a life peer, Baron Archer of Weston-super-Mare.
By 1999, he was selected as the Conservative candidate for the first .
Why did he go to prison?
In November 1999, former friend Ted Francis revealed that Archer had asked him to provide a fake alibi for the night of September 9, 1986, the key date in the original libel trial.
At the same time, Peppiatt handed over genuine diaries from 1986, which showed that the documents Archer had presented in court 12 years earlier were forged.
Archer was forced to withdraw from the mayoral race and was ousted from the .
He in 2001, facing charges of perjury and perverting the course of justice (lying under oath and fabricating evidence to mislead the court).
Prosecutors argued that he lied and fabricated evidence to deceive a High Court jury and secure a £500,000 payout; Archer maintained his innocence.
On July 19, 2001, the jury found him , while acquitting him of one perjury charge.
He was sentenced to .
Archer served his sentence across several facilities, starting in the high-security HMP Belmarsh before transferring to HMP Wayland, HMP North Sea Camp, and HMP Hollesley Bay.
He served half of his sentence – two years – before being released on license in July 2003.
