// BBC UK NEWS — CRONACA
Jeffrey Archer: successful novelist, disgraced politician and convicted liar
As many have observed, Jeffrey Archer, who has died aged 86, led a life as colourful as the plot in one of his novels.
He was, at one time or other, a senior Conservative politician, a best-selling author, a peer of the realm, and a convicted perjurer.
Possessed of huge drive, vast wealth and immense personal charm, Archer bounced back from disaster and, more than once, rebuilt a shattered life.
But for all his talents, he will be remembered as a man affected by a defective moral compass, whose public humiliation was entirely self-inflicted.
Jeffrey Howard Archer was born in north London on 15 April 1940.
Within two weeks, his parents moved to Weston-super-Mare in Somerset, where they bought a house from John Cleese's mother.
Archer's mother Lola was the first woman journalist on the weekly paper, the Weston Mercury.
In later life, Archer insisted that his father William, who was some 40 years older than his mother, was a decorated hero of the First World War.
In fact, he was a convicted fraudster who, according to a US newspaper, spent the war years conning people in New York.
Jeffrey Archer (wearing number 3) runs for Oxford University against Cambridge University at the White City stadium in London in 1964