Mary Archer

Mary Doreen Archer, Baroness Archer of Weston-super-Mare (born Mary Doreen Weeden, on 22 December 1944) is a British scientist specialising in solar power conversion. She studied chemistry at St Anne's College, Oxford, and then physical chemistry at Imperial College London, before becoming a lecturer at Cambridge University. From 1988 to 2000 she was Chairman of the National Energy Foundation, which promotes renewable energy. In 2002 she was appointed Chairman of Addenbrooke's NHS Trust, Cambridge.

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Mary Archer is better known to the general public as the wife of the novelist and former politician Jeffrey Archer, whom she married in 1966. When he was granted a life peerage in 1992, she gained the title The Lady Archer of Weston-super-Mare. In 1987 she gave evidence at the High Court in a libel case brought by her husband against the Daily Star newspaper, when Judge Bernie Caulfield infamously asked: "Has she elegance? Is she not fragrant?"^[1][2] In 2001, when Jeffrey Archer was accused of perjury in the earlier trial, she appeared at the Old Bailey to defend him.^[3] Jeffrey Archer was subsequently convicted and imprisoned for perjury. She is reported to have once said, "Jeffrey has a gift for inaccurate precis".^[4]

In 1994, Archer was a non-executive director of Anglia Television at a time when it was the target of a takeover bid. Following reports from the London Stock Exchange, the Department of Trade and Industry appointed inspectors on February 8, 1994 to investigate possible insider dealing contraventions by certain individuals including her husband. No charges were brought.

She and Jeffrey have two children, William and James.

She lives in the Old Vicarage, Grantchester, near Cambridge, the former home immortalised by Rupert Brooke in a poem of that title. She is a patron of the Rupert Brooke Society.

References

1. ^ "New Jeffrey Archer saga starts to unfold", Peter Almond, Cayman.net
2. ^ "Why Mary has stood by her man", The Guardian, 2001
3. ^ "Mary Archer: For better and worse", BBC, 2001
4. ^ "Political chancer with lots of fizz", The Guardian, 2001