Queen Camilla pays tribute to Jeffrey Archer

BBC News has reported that Jeffrey Archer, the bestselling novelist and former Conservative politician, has died aged 86. His career spanned Parliament, a senior party role and decades of popular fiction, but was also marked by a criminal conviction and prison sentence. [1]

Archer won the Conservative seat of Louth in a 1969 by-election. Facing bankruptcy after an investment proved to be a scam, he left Parliament in 1974. He published his first novel, *Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less*, in 1976, followed by books including *Kane and Abel* and *First Among Equals*. [1]

Margaret Thatcher appointed him deputy chairman of the Conservative Party in 1985, with responsibility for fundraising. He resigned the following year after newspaper reports involving Monica Coghlan. Archer initially won £500,000 in damages in a libel action against the *Daily Star*. He was later charged with perjury and perverting the course of justice; in 2001, he was convicted and sentenced to four years in prison. [1]

Archer became a peer in 1992 and formally retired from the House of Lords in 2024. In January 2026, he announced that his forthcoming novel, *Adam and Eve*, would be his last. [1]

Update

Queen Camilla has paid tribute to Jeffrey Archer following his death at 86. In a statement reported by the BBC, she said friends would remember the author and former Conservative MP as an “irrepressible life force”. [2]

Camilla also acknowledged that Archer was “not without flaw”. He was jailed for perjury in 2001 after being found guilty of lying and cheating in a 1987 libel case against the Daily Star. [2]

Camilla said she had learned of his death the previous day, on the eve of publication of what she called his final work and soon after his appearance at her Queen’s Reading Room Festival. Archer supported the Queen’s Reading Room charity. [2]