Archer, who sold more than 300 million books during a five-decade writing career, died “suddenly and peacefully at home” on Monday between writing sessions, according to his publisher HarperCollins.
Known for bestsellers including Kane and Abel and the Clifton Chronicles, Archer frequently drew on his hometown of Wellington, Somerset, in his fiction.
Archer was born in north London in 1940 and moved with his family to Weston-super-Mare in Somerset. In 1969, he was elected as the Conservative MP for Louth in Lincolnshire and served in Parliament for five years before becoming deputy chairman of the Conservative Party.
He entered the House of Lords in 1992 but was sentenced to four years in prison in 2001 after being convicted of perjury and perverting the course of justice.
The conviction followed a libel case Archer brought against the Daily Star after the newspaper alleged that he had slept with a sex worker. Archer had been awarded £500,000 in damages, but the court later found that he had lied during the case, arranged a false alibi, and produced fake diary entries.
He was released in 2003 and remained a member of the House of Lords until retiring in 2024.
Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch described Archer's death as “devastating news,” saying he remained “very much loved by the Conservative family.”
Former prime minister John Major said Archer had lived “one of the most remarkable lives of our age” and would be “much missed – and long remembered.”
Archer's final novel, Adam and Eve, was released on Tuesday.
Broadcaster Gyles Brandreth, who spent time with Archer on Sunday, said the author had been in good spirits while promoting the book in London.
“He didn't really acknowledge that he'd changed much since being in prison, but I think he became a nicer person in some ways, a gentler, a milder person after the prison experience,” Brandreth said.
Former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith described Archer as “a remarkable man who did everything at full bore,” while former ministers Sajid Javid and Jeremy Hunt also paid tribute to him.
Michael Grade, who produced the television adaptation of Kane and Abel, described Archer as a “consummate storyteller” both in life and in his writing.
“He loved politics more than anything,” Grade said, adding that Archer's political ambitions were ultimately ended by the mistakes in his life.
Archer returned to his former school in Wellington last week to promote Adam and Eve. He had been due to appear at the Cheltenham Literature Festival on Saturday to discuss the novel.
Archer and his wife Mary celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary this year, HarperCollins said.