William Gadsby Peet meets former MP and bestselling author Jeffrey Archer ahead of his talk at the Windsor Festival
I will admit to some nerves as I stand in a lift headed for the top floor of Jeffrey Archer’s opulent apartment building in Vauxhall. It is not every day that one finds oneself moments away from interviewing one of the best selling authors on the planet, in a palatial penthouse setting made famous over the years by a host of ‘shepherd’s pie and Krug’ soirees featuring the crème de la crème of British politics and journalism.
My unease is augmented by the question that has been running through my head; a riddle, not entirely coincidentally, that I have nominally been sent to solve: Who is Jeffrey Archer? After all, his portrayals in the press over a career spanning five decades have been as varied and complex as the characters in his many novels – crook, politician, author, socialite, entertainer, philanthropist and, as Ian Hislop once famously said to Mary Archer, his wife, on Question Time, “the reason Tony Blair gets away with it in Parliament”.
Well, in person Lord Archer – or Jeffrey, as he quickly corrects me upon our introduction – is a rather pleasantly mad gentleman, with whom conversation is both lively and enjoyable.
“I’ve a friend in publishing who supports Fulham. We’ve all got our problems in life,” he quips, as the talk turns to football. Later I divulge that, through happenstance, I have recently read Kane and Abel, to which he responds in tones of booming, Brian Blessed-esque outrage: “Why have you taken this long? You look over 20 to me!” Best of all is the revelation of his literary heroes: “Dickens and Dumas, they are the granddaddies of storytelling. Stay with ‘em, baby, they ain’t letting you go.”
Jeffrey Archer signing books in India
Indeed, such are the varied tangents of a discussion with Jeffrey Archer that I am 15 minutes into a debate on the England cricket team before coming to with a start. Since the reason for this interview is his talk at Windsor Festival on ‘How to Write a Bestseller’, I should probably ask him a question about books. This I duly do. But if you’re hoping for an easy prescription for literary fame and fortune, forget it.
“There is no formula for writing a bestseller,” asserts Lord Archer. “You write the book you want to write and you pray. You can either tell a story or you can’t – it’s a god-given gift. Now, you can be a good writer, if you’ve had a good education and you’re well read, but telling a story is different. A journalist who writes for the New York Times summed it up beautifully: ‘I’d like to have the angel that sits on Jeffrey Archer’s shoulder and whispers in his ear,’ he said, which is a lovely way of putting it.”
Given the nemetic themes that often permeate Archer’s novels, aspiring writers could probably do with the devil on his other shoulder too. In the end, however, no supernatural agency can serve as a substitute for hard work.
“When young people who want to be writers ask me for advice, I tell them to go to the ballet,” says Archer with an impish grin. “They tend to look bemused and ask why, so I explain that I want them to watch the prima ballerina and figure out how many hours of work she’s done to get where she is.
“Then I want them to look at the corps de ballet, who won’t be quite as talented as the girl at the front, but who will have worked just as hard. Finally, I tell them to think about the thousands of people who would love to be in the corps, but aren’t good enough.
David M. Benett
Jeffrey Archer auctioneering for charity
“Writing is just as tough if you want to be the prima ballerina. As long as you get that into your head, you’ll realise how hard you have to work. No one would say that they could easily become a prima ballerina, but an awful lot of people go around saying that they could write a bestseller.”
Lord Archer certainly practises what he preaches, as his own somewhat brutal writing regime attests. When putting together a novel, he heads to his villa in Majorca – cheekily named Writer’s Block – to escape all distraction. There he works for eight hours a day, in two-hour slots. He writes by hand, producing up to 14 drafts before settling on the final text, and he is typically blunt about his recent motivation for maintaining such a prodigious output.
“I think, as I grow older, I’m becoming frightened of death,” he explains. “I’m very aware of the fact that I have three or more books that I still want to do and I’m fearful of not living long enough to do them, so I don’t hang about.
“With the Clifton Chronicles, for example, I was only meant to write five books originally, but I realised halfway through that it really needed to be seven. I did worry a little, as I’m 77 and didn’t want to have fans thinking: ‘Wait a minute; we paid for the first five – what do you mean, died? What sort of excuse is that!’”
With each volume in the Clifton series selling more copies than its predecessor, the public certainly seems grateful to Archer for keeping his clogs unpopped before finishing that particular heptalogy. Moreover, with total career sales now north of 330 million, Archer has surely enjoyed success beyond any writer’s reasonable ambition.
Jeffrey Archer and the late Bruce Forsyth
And yet, one cannot help wondering whether he has any regrets over a political career that was twice brought to a premature halt: the first time, in 1974, by near-bankruptcy from investment in the fraudulent Canadian firm Aquablast; the second time on account of the Monica Coghlan scandal that eventually led to his imprisonment for perjury from 2001-3.
“Having had two lives, I do tend unavoidably to daydream about being Prime Minister. But then I think: ‘Hold on, I might have ended up as Undersecretary for Transport!’ Would I rather have that or Kane and Abel? Thanks very much, I’ll take Kane and Abel. I do consider myself very lucky, however, to have worked with Margaret Thatcher for eleven years and with John Major for seven, so then also to have my books, well, I feel very privileged.”
So, that’s writing and politics covered. Job done for the interview, surely? But Lord Archer has other ideas and our conversation wanders off in a hundred different directions, from the recent general election – “I went to bed at ten after I’d seen the exit poll. No point staying up all night the way you did, you idiot, stuck in the pub enjoying yourself!” – to the sacking of Donald Trump’s communications chief Anthony Scaramucci over attacks on colleagues – “I couldn’t believe it. Can you imagine Douglas Hurd saying that?” – right through to my support for West Ham United: “Oh, poor fellow!”
Say what you will about Jeffrey Archer, just like his books, the man is damn entertaining.
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