Mother 'driving force' in Archer's life

Lola Hayne's ambition was passed onto her son

Lord Archer's mother Lola Hayne was said to be the force behind the millionaire novelist's energy, ambition, entrepreneurial spirit and reckless streak.

She died, aged 87, just days before the law caught up with her "irrepressible" son, who was jailed for perjury at the Old Bailey on Thursday.

The first female journalist on her local paper in Weston-super-Mare, the highly ambitious and intelligent Lola was widely seen as the dominant influence in her son's early life.

Archer, 61, was let out of prison on Saturday to attend her memorial service.

Newspaper insights

Lola's weekly column in the Weston Mercury gave telling insights into her young son as he developed the characteristics that would one day make him famous.

When he was a young boy, she wrote in her local newspaper column: "I'm never sure of what my 10-year-old will be up to next."

Weston Mercury column

April 15, 1950 - "Every holiday my son throws himself wholeheartedly into a hobby. At Christmas it was trains; he demanded one penny every day for a platform ticket and lived on the station"

In a stream of anecdotes over 10 years, she endearingly chronicled the schemes, hobbies and money-making strategies of the young Archer.

He was always referred to as "Tuppence" in her article, because of his habit of going into the sweet shop and asking: "Anything for tuppence?"

Illegitimate children

Lola Cook was born in 1913, just a year before the start of the First World War.

She won a scholarship to a private school in Bristol and married Archer's father William in 1939, when he was 63 and she was 26.

He fathered Jeffrey at the age of 64.

But at 17 Lola had given birth to an illegitimate daughter, Wendy, who was adopted.

Four years later, she had a second child, this time by William, whom she called Jeffrey.

But this son was also given up for adoption, four years later.

A young Archer takes his seat in the House of Commons in 1969

When the second Jeffrey arrived in 1940, Lola was overjoyed at having a legitimate child she could keep and doted on him.

She coped with difficult circumstances in Jeffrey's early years, being always short of money and having a husband who was virtually retired and often absent.

Despite insisting that her boy should do chores around the house, she was guilty of spoiling her son at times.

Michael Crick, author of an unofficial biography of Lord Archer, suggests that Lola was perhaps racked with the memory of her first two children and determined to do her best by Jeffrey.

Three husbands

Lord Archer's father died in 1956.

Lola re-married twice, and outlived both her new husbands. The last one, Samuel Hayne, died in 1993.

In 1999, another daughter came to light - this time one that his mother had adopted into the family.

When Archer was campaigning to become mayor of London his adopted sister was revealed to be black.

Lola had adopted Elizabeth Tremaine in the 1950s, but the move only came to public attention when her politician brother was trying to prove to potential voters that he was not racially prejudiced.

Weston Mercury column

June 3, 1950: "For some months now, Tuppence has begged me to let him cook his own breakfast. Last Sunday I gave in and he went to work with bacon, eggs, fried bread etc and finally sat down to a charred mass which, if I had dared to put it in front of him, would have been rejected"

Ms Tremaine, 52, who moved to New York to work as a drug rehabilitation counsellor, was an integral part of the Archer family and was a bridesmaid at his wedding.

But Lola's health deteriorated in the 1990s.

In 1997 Archer rushed home from South Africa after being told she was close to death.

After that scare, he moved her from the West Country to a nursing home nearer his own house in Cambridgeshire.

She lived out her days at Highfield Nursing Home in Saffron Walden where she died on 11 July after suffering a stroke.