Our Author of the Month for August 2025 is Lord Jeffrey Archer, born 1940. Like Sir John Mortimer, Baron Archer of Weston-super-Mare crosses various genres and is a prolific novelist, short story writer, playwright, non-fiction writer and scriptwriter.

Much of Archer’s writing is based on personal experiences in prison and the legal system, in politics, as a funds raiser, as a policeman and as an owner of an art gallery.  He has a fine eye for detail. His short stories always pack a punch and once you open an Archer novel it is hard to put it down. His sagas are particularly enduring and seamlessly follow from book to book without any glitches.

The life of Jeffrey Archer is itself like the script from one of his novels. He earned a blue for athletics at Oxford, stayed on at Oxford for three years whilst studying a diploma course of one year’s duration, became a Councillor for Greater London Council, was elected as a Conservative MP in the Commons, took out a libel action in the High Court and was ultimately jailed for perjury and perverting the course of justice. This life provided ample material for his writings.

Given his broad experience of life, and the public exposure he has received over a long period of time, it is not surprising that Archer has also been good subject material for biographical analysis. In particular, a biography of Archer by Michael Crick goes into great depth about Archer’s exploits, his talents and his ambition.

As mentioned, the Archer novels are compulsive reading with twists and plots that cannot be put down. He has a remarkable capacity to hold the reader right to the end. This is never better experienced than in his short stories, which have delightful titles and on occasions are written with a number of endings to choose from. “A Quiver Full of Arrows”, “A Twist in the Tale”, “Twelve Red Herrings”, “To Cut a Long Story Short” “Cat  O’Nine Tales” “And Thereby Hangs a Tale” are remarkable easy reading and so engaging as to give remarkable light holiday reading.

The standalone novels of Jeffrey Archer are also enjoyable from the point of view of historical fiction and the capacity to weave true historical characters into real life prose. Again, his ability to give a book a good title is  real talent. His first novel “Not a Penny More and Not a Penny Less” was such a winner that it got him out of deep financial trouble and subsequent novels have firmly entrenched him the pantheon of great modern writers.