Jeffrey Archer Keynote Speaker

Lord Jeffrey Archer is an English politician and a best-selling author.

Following a degree at Oxford University,  Jeffrey was elected to the Greater London Council, and three years later at the age of 29, he became Member of Parliament for Louth. After five years in the Commons and a promising political career ahead of him, he invested heavily in a Canadian company called Aquablast, on the advice of the Bank of Boston. The company went into liquidation, and three directors were later sent to jail for fraud. Left with debts of £427,727, and on the brink of bankruptcy, he resigned from the House of Commons.

Aged 34, determined to repay his creditors in full, he sat down to write his first novel Not a penny more, not a penny less. Written at the home of his former Oxford Principal, it was taken up by the Literary Agent, Debbie Owen, and sold to 17 countries within a year. It was also made into a successful serial for BBC Radio 4, and was later televised in 1990 by the BBC.

He returned to politics in 1985 when he became Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party until November 1986.

Having run a successful campaign for Mayor of London for two-and-a-half years, from 1997, Jeffrey Archer was selected as the official Conservative Party Candidate for London’s Mayor in October 1999 by an overwhelming majority. In November that same year, he withdrew his candidacy, having been charged with perjury and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. He was sentenced to four years imprisonment and was released in July 2003, having served two years.

Jeffrey Archer is now published in 97 countries and more than 33 languages,  with international sales passing 330 million copies. He is the only author ever to have been a number one bestseller in fiction (nineteen times), short stories (four times) and non-fiction (The Prison Diaries). he was also made a Life Peer in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List of 1992.

It was his phenomenal literary career but also his rich political career that saw him named a  Life Peer in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List of 1992.