Jeffrey Archer
English author and former politician (born 1940)
Jeffrey Howard Archer, Baron Archer of Weston-super-Mare (born 15 April 1940) is an English novelist and former politician. He was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Louth (Lincolnshire) from 1969 to 1974, but did not seek re-election after almost going bankrupt. Archer revived his fortunes as a novelist. His novel Kane and Abel (1979) remains one of the best-selling books in the world, with an estimated 34 million copies sold globally. Overall his books have sold more than 320 million copies worldwide.
Archer returned to politics and was the deputy chairman of the Conservative Party from 1985 to 1986; he resigned after a newspaper accused him of paying money to a sex worker. In 1987, he won a civil case and was awarded large damages because of this claim. He was made a life peer in 1992 and subsequently became the first Conservative candidate to be selected as a candidate for mayor of London. He ended his candidacy in 1999 after it emerged that he had lied in the case in 1987. In 2001, he was sentenced to four years in prison for perjury and perverting the course of justice, ending his active political career.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Jeffrey Archer” is english author and former politician (born 1940). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Jeffrey, Archer and English, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “english author and former politician (born 1940)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q313489. VIAF identifies the subject as 110249804. The Library of Congress control number is n79115945. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1940, 1969, 1974 and 1979.
Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Jeffrey Archer” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.