A marvellous storyteller
YEARS ago, this brilliant writer and speaker (Jeffrey Archer, of course) did a Literature Live! evening at the Taj Lands End, to a standing room only. As always he had the audience in thrall. At the Q&A session, a young boy in the audience asked him for advice on writing. I will always remember his response and I’ve paraphrased it here: ‘Write what you know about. Look at Jane Austen. In her time, the obsession was about mothers marrying off their daughters. So, in Pride and Prejudice, she married off three daughters, In Sense & Sensibility, she married off two daughters and in Emma, she married off one.’ It had us rolling with laughter, but you couldn’t ignore the kernel of truth in it. The world has lost a marvellous story teller.
I will always remember his response and I’ve paraphrased it here: ‘Write what you know about. Look at Jane Austen. In her time, the obsession was about mothers marrying off their daughters. So, in Pride and Prejudice, she married off three daughters, In Sense & Sensibility, she married off two daughters and in Emma, she married off one.’
Amy Fernandes co-director, Literature Live!
A dear, dear friendship
I FIRST met Jeffrey Archer nearly 20 years ago at a writers’ dinner, alongside Bachi Karkaria, Shobhaa [De], among others. We hit it off right then. In fact, in July, we [my husband, Kanwar Rameshwar Singh Jamwal and I] visited him in the UK, and had lunch alongside John Major, David Suchet among many others. After lunch, he asked us [my husband and I] to stay, and we watched the sun till 10 pm. Now, I think it was his swansong.
Jeffrey was not maudlin or emotional, but had a wry, British humour. This Britishness also shaped his passion for art which leant towards the contemporary. I recall he didn’t take much interest in the indigenous work of art I had gifted him. “I am very British, you know,” he told me.
In fact, he transformed our real life to be used in the book And Thereby Hangs A Tale (2010) in the story, Caste Off. It is one of the rare instances he used real names. He loved many things like being an auctioneer, and Bollywood. He dearly wanted to make a film, but it never quite came about. Now, I feel the onus is on me to fulfil that dream.
It was a beautiful friendship, and this is a tragic, personal loss. But I will never tire of speaking of such a wonderful, warm friend.
Nisha JamVwal art curator, columnist
Archer everywhere
THROUGHOUT my career as a bookseller, I’ve sold over 10,000 copies of his works, with more than 6,500 copies at Kitabkhana alone. He is one of the Top 10 international selling authors at our bookstore. A publisher had recalled an incident where a vendor of pirated books tried to sell Archer a copy of his book at the Kemps Corner traffic signal, on the guarantee that it was by a bestseller! A bemused Archer jokingly told his then publisher that he deserved royalty even for pirated copies!
T Jagath, COO, Kitabkhana
Old-fashioned chutzpah
JEFFREY Archer was rather like a character in one of his own novels; in an adjective used by Homer to describe and even define Odysseus, Archer was polytropos, a man “of many twists”, a complicated man who constructed himself through a montage of imagination, delusion, deceit, and plain splendid old-fashioned chutzpah!
Ranjit Hoskote poet, art critic, cultural theorist and curator
Passionate fan base
WE have vivid memories of his visits to India; the enormous crowds at Crossword stores; especially at Aundh, Pune where people were pressed against the glass shutters, keen to see him.
He loved his Indian readers, and they loved him back with an affection that was extraordinary to witness. He often spoke about India being home to some of his largest and most passionate fan base. In all our interactions, Mr Archer would tell us how special India was to him and how much our bookstores meant to him. His warmth, humour and the incredible excitement around every visit will always stay with us.
Nidhi Gupta, executive director, Crossword Bookstores
Words that never fade
LORD Jeffrey Archer has been one of my favourite storytellers. So, imagine my delight when the Taj Mahal Hotel brought the man behind those words into my world. Lord Archer kept returning, and I had the pleasure of meeting him on several of those visits during my tenure. He would often be at Nalanda, the much-loved bookshop at the hotel. It’s where I would often meet him; sometimes, alongside his friend Nisha JamVwal.
He was drawn in by Nisha’s extraordinary life that he turned it into Caste-Off, his favourite short story from And Thereby Hangs a Tale collection.
My most treasured memory is hearing him give voice to his words. He knew precisely where to pause, what to leave unsaid, and when a sentence had said enough. A line he read has stayed with me; it ended with ‘the sun set on his young life.’ I’ve lost the exact words but never the feeling. Perhaps, that’s the secret with great writers–Long after we’ve forgotten the chapters and the words, they leave us holding on to a sentence and a feeling that refuses to fade.
Nikhila Palat former Director, PR, Taj Mahal Hotel, Mumbai
Genuine affection
My strongest memory of Jeffrey Archer is from a few years back when we were getting ready to publish his latest William Warwick novel. It was a bit of a milestone for us, as it marked his return to the HarperCollins list after quite a few years with Pan Macmillan. What stuck me was how often he’d bring up his earlier trips to India where hundreds of readers turn up for the launch. You could tell that scale and the warmth of it had left a lasting impression on him.
It was obvious that his affection for Indian readers was genuine. He loved their energy, the crowds, and the incredible generosity he encountered here. It’s rare for an author to forge that kind of enduring bond with an audience across the world, but he took immense pride in it, and was visibly touched by the love he received whenever he returned.
Rahul Dixit SVP Sales, HarperCollins India
Curated by Fiona Fernandez, with inputs from Shriram Iyengar
