Jeffrey Howard Archer, Baron Archer of Weston-super-Mare (born 15 April 1940) is an English author and former politician. He was an MP and Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party, and prior to his conviction and imprisonment for perjury was a candidate in the 2000 race to be London Mayor.

Biography

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There has been much confusion over the details of Archer's life and there is evidence that he has exploited ambiguities or else fabricated details on many occasions - for example, he once claimed in a television interview that his father was Viceroy of Brunei, and at another time referred to him as British consul in Singapore. Not only is this untrue, but Brunei has never had a Viceroy, nor did Singapore have a British consul at the time (having been a British colony). What is most peculiar is that a man with some talent and certainly proven marketing skills felt the need to fabricate, or at very least "embroider", certain facts of his life, to the point that he became a Walter Mitty-like character.

The research conducted by Michael Crick, Archer's unofficial biographer, reveals that Archer's father, William Archer, was originally a solicitor's clerk in the East End of London, but disappeared (leaving a wife and children). Crick claims that Archer's father, upon emigrating to the United States, then fabricated a military record for himself, claiming to have served as an officer in the British Army during the First World War. His second marriage, to the American Florence Brainerd, collapsed when this fraud was revealed. William Archer, according to Crick's account, then returned to Britain in his late fifties and remarried for a third time, to Lola Cook, a much younger woman. Jeffrey Archer was a child of this marriage.

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