AUTHOR, former politician, and ex-Wellington Schoolboy Lord Jeffrey Archer has died, three days after returning to the school for a BBC interview.

Lord Archer visited Wellington School on Friday (October 2) to return to the library where his love of storytelling began.

He died on Monday at the age of 86 years.

The interview had been arranged by BBC Breakfast presenter Jon Kay, whose career was kick-started in 1990 by his first ever interview with a politician, then plain Mr Archer, who was a close friend of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Friday’s return to Wellington, where he started school on a scholarship in 1951, came ahead of publication due on Tuesday of his last book ‘Adam and Eve’.

And in a prescient quote for the BBC’s Clara Bullock, he said: “I think the clever thing about life is to know when to get out.”

Lord Archer’s publisher HarperCollins said in a statement on Monday he died at home between writing sessions ‘suddenly and peacefully’.

Jeffrey Archer pictured on a stop-off in Somerset's cricket museum in 2001 before visiting Wellington School. PHOTO: Alain Lockyer.
Jeffrey Archer pictured on a stop-off in Somerset's cricket museum in 2001 before visiting Wellington School. PHOTO: Alain Lockyer. (Alain Lockyer)

In July of this year Lord Archer and his wife Mary celebrated their diamond wedding anniversary.

Lord Archer wrote nearly 60 novels and short stories in his literary career and sold more than 300 million copies worldwide.

On Friday, he told the BBC: “It is wonderful to come back.

“What I got a real thrill about when I was walking toward the library is seeing the young boys and girls and thinking, ‘that's the next generation’.

“The library is really special to me because it brings back so many happy memories.

“I was on a scholarship because we had no money.

“I came from Weston-super-Mare and we had no money.

“I would never have got in without a scholarship.”

Wellington School development officer Juliet Handley told the BBC: “He has so much energy and enthusiasm, it is wonderful to see.

A video grab of Lord Jeffrey Archer while being interviewed by the BBC in the Wellington School library on Friday.
A video grab of Lord Jeffrey Archer while being interviewed by the BBC in the Wellington School library on Friday. IMAGE: BBC. (BBC)

“To have such a big career, you have to have a passionate desire to do it, you will not keep going otherwise.

“He wrote 18 drafts for this book he is just publishing by hand.

“You have to have a love for it.”

After leaving Wellington School, Lord Archer went on to be a Conservative MP and was later appointed by Thatcher as deputy chairman of the party.

He was embroiled in financial scandals throughout his later life, and in 2001 was sentenced to four years in prison after he was convicted of perjury in a 1987 libel trial he had won against the newspaper the Daily Star.

Having helped to set up an international charity to help Iraq’s Kurds when they were being oppressed by Saddam Hussein, there were later allegations that little of the millions allegedly raised actually reached the refugees.

In 2004, there were even accusations that Lord Archer had helped to finance a failed coup d’état against the government of the African country Equatorial Guinea.

But, he will be best remembered as a colourful politician on the Left of the Conservatives and for his novels, some of which had storylines set in Wellington.