• August 06, 2001
• Vol. 56
• No. 6

Lord of the Lies

At the Trial of Bestselling Author Jeffrey Archer, His Infidelities to His Wife Take a Backseat to the Liberties He Took with the Truth

His gift for fiction has made novelist Jeffrey Archer a very wealthy man. Yet as he sat in the dock of London's Old Bailey courthouse, accused of a pattern of lies and deception, it seemed his knack for fabrication might also lead to his downfall. Indeed, on July 19, after four days of deliberation, a jury convicted Archer, 61, of two counts of perjury and two counts of "perverting the course of public justice." Humphrey Potts, the judge, lamented the "extremely distasteful case" and handed Archer a stiff sentence of four years in prison, of which he must serve at least two. The normally loquacious Archer stood silently in the dock—for once at a loss for words.

The details of the case against Archer, a member of the House of Lords, were as lurid as they were complex. It all stemmed from events 15 years ago, when Archer was not only the celebrated author of popular novels, including the blockbuster Kane and Abel, but also a major power in the Conservative Party. A London tabloid had accused him of having sex with a prostitute one night and later paying her hush money. He sued for libel and won $750,000. But at his most recent trial it emerged that he had recruited a friend to supply a sham alibi and ordered his secretary to falsify diary entries to help his case.

There was also testimony about Archer's infidelities. His wife, Mary, 56, looking cool and elegant, told the court she learned that her husband was having an affair with Andrina Colquhoun, now 48, after reading an item about the two in a newspaper. "Wives are not necessarily the first to find out about these things," she observed. Summing up, prosecutor David Waters said of Archer, "He is entirely the author of his own misfortune."