‘It’s insulting’: Jeffrey Archer on AI, dead authors, his wife getting cancelled and forging Rembrandt

Jeffrey Archer isn’t happy: his wife has been cancelled, he doesn’t like AI and he’s not impressed by authors writing from beyond the grave. On the plus side, he has a new forged Rembrandt.

He’d be the first to admit he’s had a colourful life, but today, Jeffrey Archer is seeing red.

Just before this interview, the bestselling author and peer saw the UK Telegraph’s front-page story, revealing his wife, Dame Mary Archer, had had her upcoming appointment as Chair of London’s Royal Parks, rescinded by the new Labour government.

“She was looking forward to it so much,” Jeffrey, 84 says. “She’d already been to see all the parks, met the chief executive, done the handover … and suddenly she gets a phone call from a civil servant, saying, ‘You’re sacked’.

“Members of the Royal Family had rung and congratulated her,” he adds, with indignation.

‘You’re sacked’ … Lord Jeffrey Archer and Mary Archer.

The cancellation – suspected by some in the UK media to be a political swipe because of her husband’s Tory establishment background – is ironic, because it almost parallels the plot of his latest William Warwick novel, An Eye for an Eye, which we’re in his Thameside penthouse to talk about.

In the book, the Scotland Yard detective’s wife Beth, the head of a museum, has to resign her application to be director of the Tate galleries, amid political scandal. “Well, Beth is Mary,” he says, “when I’m writing Beth, I’m writing Mary.”

What Mary thinks about this, is less clear. While we talk, the 79-year-old former chair of London’s Science Museum walks into the vast cream and gold sitting room and Jeffrey declares, “And so you see Beth. When you see Beth, you see Mary!”

“Yes, well, bits of me,” she says, without smiling. “I don’t know as much as Beth knows about art.”

‘I wanted a first-class forger’ … Jeffrey Archer at his London penthouse with the recreated Rembrandt and his collaborators Billy Mumford, a reformed art forger, and Michelle Roycroft, former senior member of the Arts & Antiquities unit at Scotland Yard.

Jeffrey, however, knows a whole lot about art – their coffee table is piled with art books and catalogues and the walls adorned with priceless works … although two are forgeries.

He’s not concerned, however, chiefly because he commissioned them. It’s his latest endeavour to bring to life the plot of An Eye for an Eye, which involves forging a Rembrandt and Thomas Jefferson’s letter for the Declaration of Independence.

He’s got form for fakeries – last year, the author commissioned a jeweller to create replica Crown Jewels for the previous book, Traitors Gate. Now he’s teamed up with “the world’s most prolific – and reformed – forger”, William ‘Billy the Brush’ Mumford, who was jailed in 2012 for putting more than £6 million of fake works through some of the top auction houses in the world.

He was put in touch with him through Michelle Roycroft, he explains, one of the two former police officers, alongside John Sutherland, who advises him on his William Warwick novels. “I wanted a first-class forger and Michelle said, ‘I arrested the best in the business’,” he says.

First brush with faking it … Jeffrey Archer with master craftsman Alan Gard and their replica crown, created for his 2023 novel Traitors Gate.

Jeffrey asked Mumford to recreate a Rembrandt and, 17 versions later, he’d perfected the piece, which is now framed and leaning against a wall in the apartment. “He said to me, ‘You gotta understand, Jeff, Rembrandt’s a genius. I am a painter and decorator’,” Jeffrey says, with a laugh. “I’m going to keep it, it’s great, isn’t it? I like it,” he says.

Meanwhile, he’s forging ahead with his next novel, which will be the eighth and last book in the series. So, can we expect fireworks in the finale?

Fake art, Nazis and sexism: A matter of life and death

“I suddenly woke up to the fact that 2012 was the London Olympics,” he says. “And if I made William the policeman in charge of security at the Olympics, with my own love of sport, having run for my country (he competed for Great Britain in the 1960s), that was a double,” he says. “Then I got a triple, because John produced the man, Commander Broadhurst, who did,” he says. “And he sat there and told me stories you would not believe.”

He adds, with typical modesty, that it ends on, “the best last two lines I’ve ever written.”

‘Best last two lines I’ve ever written’ … An Eye For An Eye.

And then …? He has no intention of retiring, he says, even though he could have done after 1979’s Kane and Abel, which has sold 37 million copies and “is on its 132nd reprint”. He waves his arms around the room with a flourish and says, “it got me all this”. But he hints at one more blockbuster, “before I’m 87”.

So, he wouldn’t do anything differently, if he had his time again? “Yes, I’d be Prime Minister,” he says, matter-of-factly.

One thing he’ll never do, however, is let co-authors continue his legacy. “Wilbur Smith’s got a book out. He’s been dead three years,” he says, “so it’s ‘Wilbur Smith and Humpty Dumpty’. I think that’s disgraceful. I hate it and I’ve put in my will they can’t do it.

“I have no vanity, I have immense pride – my fans will say, ‘I know he didn’t write that’.”

And don’t get him started on AI-generated books. “I’ve done that and read what they said and it was rubbish,” he says.

“Well, the opening line of Kane and Abel is, ‘She only stopped screaming when she died. It was then that he started to scream.’ Come on, AI, you’re going to deliver that line? It’s insulting.”

‘I have no vanity’ … but Lord Archer does have a sense of mischief, as he shows by hamming it up with acting royalty Dame Joan Collins at a London book launch in 2023.

An Eye for an Eye by Jeffrey Archer will be published on October 2 (HarperCollins, $39.99). Join the chat about your favourite authors, books and genres at the Sunday Book Club group on Facebook.