Archer, Jeffrey
Entry updated 12 October 2026. Tagged: Author.
(1940-2026) UK Conservative politician and author of many thrillers, variously active politically from his election as an MP in 1969; most notorious in the early twenty-first century for his imprisonment on a count of perjury; in his Near Future sf novel, Shall We Tell the President? (1977; rev 1985), the American president who may or may not be informed of a plot against his life is Edward Kennedy, whose gun control laws are opposed vehemently. The revised edition is transformed into a sequel to The Prodigal Daughter (1982), at the end of which Florentyna Kane, newly elected American president, announces gun control legislation; she is the president in the 1985 Shall We Tell the President? who is under threat. Archer's last novel, Adam and Eve (2026), set mostly in the 1930s and in World War Two, flirts, in the midst of class and erotic entanglements, with Hitler Wins tropes. [JC]
The Right Honourable Jeffrey Howard Archer, Baron Archer of Weston-Super-Mare
born London: 15 April 1940
died London: 5 October 2026
works (highly selected)
- Shall We Tell the President? (London: Jonathan Cape, 1977) [hb/Bill Botten]
- Shall We Tell the President? (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1985) [rev of above to create a sequel to The Prodigal Daughter below: hb/uncredited]
- The Prodigal Daughter (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1982) [hb/uncredited]
- Adam and Eve (London: HarperCollins, 2026) [hb/uncredited]
links
previous versions of this entry