What I learned from Jeffrey Archer.

If you don’t know who Jeffrey Archer is, what planet have you been living on?

After all, his books have been published in 114 countries. Given that there are 195 countries in the world, pretty impressive hey?

His work is translated into over 47 languages. You can envy his reviews too, at over half a million.

While JK Rowling outstrips him by far in sales and languages, it has to be agreed that he still has an incredibly impressive track record in book sales.

Jeffrey is 83 and divides opinion. He was a politician; he has been a convicted criminal; and if you read his biography, he has been an all-around slippery fox at times. Perhaps that is what makes him all the more fascinating. He has played by his own rules, rightly and wrongly, for all of his life. I wonder if risk-takers are always more successful or if the odds are even.

Back in the mid-1970s, he made a disastrous investment, losing a vast amount of money. He wrote novels to try to earn his fortune back, and he succeeded in the most spectacular way. His first book, Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less, launched his bestselling career. Then, in 1979, Kane and Abel was published, and that became one of the bestselling novels of all time, with an estimated 34 million copies sold worldwide.