Lord Jeffrey Archer leaves behind his loyal wife Lady Mary Archer, who stuck by him through every trial and scandal, and whom once quipped, ‘I think we have explored the further reaches of ‘for better or worse’ far more than some other couples’
Few spouses have been applauded for their enduring patience and loyalty quite like Lady Mary Archer, the wife of the late Lord Jeffrey Archer.
An often controversial figure, novelist and politician Archer lived many lives before his recent death at the age of 86, from his time behind bars to his alleged scandalous dealings with a sex worker. Stoic Mary stood by her husband through it all, showing remarkable candour when asked how she navigated the frequently tsunamic waters of their marriage.
The couple first met among the dreaming spires of the University of Oxford. It’s alleged Archer fibbed his way into prestigious Brasenose off the back of three fictitious A-levels plus a two-year US degree. Nevertheless, he thrived as president of the Oxford University Athletic Club, even going on to compete for Great Britain as a runner.
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Mary, on the other hand, was a quiet and extraordinarily hardworking young chemistry student whose diligence paid off. By the time the pair tied the knot in the summer of 1966, at Oxford’s University Church of St Mary-the-Virgin, first-class graduate Mary’s profession was listed as “research fellow”.
Mary later reflected that she felt that she’d been “much too young” when she married at 22. Asked why she went ahead with it, Mary, who was four years Archer’s junior, explained: “Jeffrey seemed more mature, older than my contemporaries. So the partnership felt reasonably grown up.”
According to The Guardian, Archer claimed to be a research fellow on his wedding day, a bending of the truth that would soon become all too familiar to his new bride. Still, despite her misgivings, Mary looked ahead excitedly to what was certain to be an unconventional future.
“I felt life would be uncertain, stimulating, and fast-moving,” she told The Herald in 2001. She wasn’t wrong. While Mary was the more serious and academic of the two, completing a PhD at Imperial College London in 1968, Archer didn’t lack for ambition. In their first spring as a married couple, he earned his first political seat as a Conservative councillor for Havering, Greater London.
It was the beginning of a career punctuated by scandal. Shortly before Christmas 1969, still just 29 years old, Archer became MP for the Lincolnshire constituency of Louth following a by-election victory which saw him charm younger members of the party. His fans did not include the fellow politician Humphry Berkeley, however, who accused the rising Archer of fiddling lunch expenses. Archer sued for libel, and the matter was settled out of court.
As they left the swinging sixties behind, the decade that followed proved to be a significant one for Mr and Mrs Archer. In 1972, they welcomed their first son, the future theatrical producer William Archer, followed in 1974 by their second son, James Archer, who would go into stock market trading and business.
The same year as James’ birth, Archer was declared bankrupt after the fraudulent Canadian cleaning company Aquablast sank, taking with it his life’s savings, and plunging him some £427,000 to £500,000 in debt. While giving evidence in Toronto, Archer was arrested on suspicion of stealing suits from a department store but was ultimately not prosecuted.
He told a then-pregnant Mary about the bankruptcy right in the middle of William’s second birthday party. She later shared: “I felt weak at the knees, but there was nothing else to do except carry on with the party.” Forced to resign from parliament under the shadow of bankruptcy, this was a dark time for Archer and his family, with Mary stepping up as the breadwinner as a lecturer in chemistry at Trinity College, Cambridge.
Mary, who went on to become a leading expert on solar energy, said : “Being in debt is worse than anything else, and I’ve tried a few things.” In an extraordinary twist, however, the former MP was able to rebrand himself as a novelist, with roaring success.
His first book, Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less, which was inspired by his bankruptcy ordeal, made the international bestseller lists and, by the time Archer reentered politics in 1986, his third novel, Kane and Abel, had firmly reestablished their fortunes and then some.
But there was still much more dirty laundry to air. In October 1986, the News of the World ran a story alleging that Archer had paid Manchester-born sex worker Monica Coghlan £2,000. This was followed by a piece in the Daily Star, which explicitly reported Archer had paid Monica for sex. Archer filed for libel against the Star, leading to one of the most extraordinary court cases of the ’80s, plus £500,000 worth of damages for the millionaire novelist.
In his jury instructions, Mr Justice Caulfield said of Mrs Archer: “Remember Mary Archer in the witness-box. Your vision of her probably will never disappear. Has she elegance? Has she fragrance? Would she have, without the strain of this trial, radiance? How would she appeal? Has she had a happy married life? Has she been able to enjoy, rather than endure, her husband Jeffrey?” Turning his attentions to Archer, he continued: “Is he in need of cold, unloving, rubber-insulated sex in a seedy hotel round about quarter to one on a Tuesday morning after an evening at the Caprice?”
While Archer admitted arranging for £2,000 to be given to Monica, he always maintained that the money was to help her leave the UK and escape press attention. He denied that they’d had sex. This wouldn’t be the only time that the Archers’ private lives would be raked over and, in 1999, former friend Ted Francis claimed Archer had asked him for a false alibi ahead of the libel case, which was ultimately not used in court.
Forced to drop his London mayoral bid in the wake of the outcry, in 2001, Archer once again found himself in court, this time standing accused of perjury and perverting the course of justice. Monica, who had called Archer a liar the first time around, tragically died in a car crash not long before the start of this second bombshell trial began, at the age of 50 years old.
Mary, cutting an elegant figure at the Old Bailey, continued to stand by her husband, and shed light on what their marriage was like behind closed doors, disputing the notion that they lived separate lives. Mary quipped, “I think we have explored the further reaches of ‘for better or worse’ far more than some other couples.” She also made it clear that Archer’s infidelities had not been a dealbreaker for her. She told the court that she’d learned of Archer’s ’80s era affair with his former personal assistant, Andrina Colquhoun, after reading about it in a gossip column, and remarked that, to the best of her knowledge, the romance ended when she asked him to put a stop to it.
When asked by David Waters QC if the revelation would have damaged his career, Mary cooly replied: “He would not have been the first aspiring politician to have had the odd fling.” Mary also made her feelings on infidelity clear in a subsequent interview with the Daily Express, sharing: “There are worse things in life than adultery. I am proud of Jeffrey’s achievements, and I think he is proud of mine. We’ve been together so long, I can’t really imagine life without him.
“Far worse things. Hostility. Cruelty. A marriage based on affection and friendship and deep knowledge, each of the other, can survive infidelity better than it can survive indifference or hostility. Our personality types are quite different, but we share a lot of attitudes and tastes.”
Archer was ultimately found guilty and sentenced to four years behind bars, putting their marriage to the test. In 2016, ahead of their Golden Wedding Anniversary, Mary told The Telegraph: “From Belmarsh [prison] Jeffrey wrote to me and said, ‘Do you want to stay in this marriage? I feel I have let you down’.
“That was really the nearest we have ever come to talking about it [divorce]. A partnership is about helping your partner in time of difficulty. That is when it matters. I am just not a quitter.”
He ended up being released after serving two years and two days of his four-year jail term, with Mary welcoming her husband back with open arms as cameras clicked on. Following Archer’s release, the couple were there for each other through serious health issues, including Mary’s bladder cancer diagnosis in 2010 and Archer’s prostate cancer in 2013.
Archer, whose subsequent surgery left him impotent, credited Mary with insisting that he get routine check-ups and vocally urged other men to do the same. Archer told how he couldn’t live without his exceptionally loyal wife, and admitted he prayed he would be the one to die first.
In a 2023 piece for Saga. He said: “After some blood tests in 2014, I was told that my PSA count was high, but as I had no symptoms of prostate cancer, I said to Mary I’d be fine to leave it for a few months. She was having none of it, though, and immediately made me a doctor’s appointment.
“I had the operation six months later. That’s just one of the many ways that Mary’s come to my rescue. Without her, I’m totally useless. Same as every marriage, we’ve had our ups and downs, but this stunningly beautiful, incredibly smart woman has stood by me. Mary is a force of nature. Now you can understand why I always say to her: ‘Please don’t die before me because I won’t be able to cope’. And I’m not joking.”
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