Rats, I like his books. Hope this means he has more time to write...

http://www.boston.com/dailynews/200/world/British_novelist_Jeffrey_Arche:.shtml

British novelist Jeffrey Archer convicted in trial that filled front pages with gossip

By Beth Gardiner, Associated Press, 7/19/2001 16:11

LONDON (AP) Best-selling novelist Jeffrey Archer could have written the seedy, sexy tale of his gripping perjury trial except, perhaps, for the ending. He's gone to prison.

The brash Archer once a high-flying Conservative politician and confidant of prime ministers was convicted Thursday of lying in 1987 when he successfully sued a tabloid newspaper for reporting he'd hired a prostitute.

He was sentenced to four years in prison at the end of a six-week trial replete with sensational details of forged diaries, fabricated alibis and alleged infidelities.

''It has been an extremely distasteful case,'' Justice Francis Potts told Archer, who bears the aristocratic title Lord Archer of Weston-super-Mare. ''These charges represent as serious an offense of perjury as I have had experience of and have been able to find in the books.''

Suspicions about his truthfulness have long swirled around Archer, a charmer who had a talent for raising money for charities, the Conservative Party and himself.

Archer, 61, was the Conservatives' deputy chairman when one of his friends was photographed handing an envelope full of cash to a prostitute named Monica Coghlan.

He quit his political job after the tabloid newspaper The Daily Star said he'd slept with her, a charge Archer still denies. He said he didn't know Coghlan but gave her $2,800 so she could leave Britain.

He charged libel in 1987, suing Star editor Lloyd Turner, and Express Newspapers, which owns the tabloid.

Before the trial, Archer asked his friend Ted Francis to say they had dined together on the night in question. Francis later said he agreed because he thought Archer wanted to keep his wife from learning he'd been with a girlfriend.

Francis, who was cleared of one count of obstructing justice, said he didn't know until later why Archer wanted the alibi.

Because of a mixup over dates, Archer didn't use Francis' alibi in court. Instead, the perjury jury found, Archer ordered his secretary to falsify diary entries.

Archer won $700,000 in damages in the libel case. Britons still chortle over the judge's closing statement: He praised Archer's wife Mary and implied that her husband had no need to patronize prostitutes.

Archer's charmed life began to unravel in 1999, when he ran for mayor of London.

Francis told his story to the News of the World tabloid, and Archer withdrew from the race after admitting he'd asked his friend to lie. He said he'd only wanted to protect the woman with whom he was dining.

A jury at London's Old Bailey where Archer's father stood in the dock in 1914 on a series of fraud charges convicted him of four counts of perjury and obstructing justice and acquitted him on one count.

Former Prime Minister John Major, a friend who elevated Archer to the House of Lords, said he was saddened. ''I hope at this difficult time everyone will also remember the many kind and generous things Jeffrey has done,'' he said.

''It is all very sad, but I think he was an almost obsessive chancer,'' said Sir Bernard Ingham, Thatcher's former press spokesman. ''He relived his books.''

The jury concluded that Archer asked for the false alibi, used a fake diary in the libel trial, perjured himself in an affidavit and lied under oath. He plans to appeal.

He was ordered to pay $245,000 in costs and faces a civil suit from the Daily Star. The News of the World tabloid also plans to sue.

Coghlan, who died in a car accident just before the trial, said Archer had ruined her life. His mother died just as the trial was ending.

''Whatever successive allegation or obstacle he faced, his instinct and solution was to manipulate events and fabricate a dishonest answer,'' prosecution lawyer David Waters said of Archer, who did not testify.

Mary Archer, a chemistry professor at Cambridge University, made headlines when she testified that in 35 years of marriage, the couple had ''explored the further reaches of 'for better or for worse.'''

Archer's knack for self-promotion and self-destruction made his career a dizzying succession of ups and downs.

At Oxford University, he became a campus celebrity after organizing a benefit dinner attended by the Beatles and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan.

He was elected to the House of Commons at age 29 in 1969, but within five years he was forced to resign after bad investments drove him to bankruptcy.

He began writing fiction out of financial necessity. ''Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less,'' based on his financial travails, was a surprise hit.

His novels of political and sexual intrigue were page-turners, with plot twists sometimes drawn from his own life. The third, ''Kane and Abel,'' spawned a U.S. television miniseries and made Archer a publishing powerhouse.

-- Anonymous, July 20, 2001