A warm tribute to Jeffrey Archer in The Daily Telegraph attracted hundreds of comments, perhaps equally divided in praise and damnation: but one word was absent from them all. Monica. That was of course the first name of the Limerick woman whose brief pelvic liaison with Archer in a Liverpool Street Hotel in London should have defined him as a liar, a rogue, a hypocrite, but was in fact merely another hurdle to be surmounted in the steeplechase of lies that was Archer’s life.
One lesson stands out from that appalling man: beware charm. It is the most sinister of human qualities, beneath which veneer a ruthless reptile might prosper, and his case did.