Seven highly valuable bronze statues stolen from the Grantchester residence of Lord and Lady Archer were recovered by police on Monday 12 February.

The statues consist of five bronze sheep, a naked shepherd and a girl doing a handstand. They were discovered at a property in Black Pit Drove, Willingham. The thieves had been captured on CCTV camera at The Orchard Tea Gardens as they stole the pieces between 6.15 and 6.45pm on Tuesday 7 February. They made their escape in a white Transit van.

Lord Archer, former Conservative Party Deputy Chairman, MP and bestselling novelist, congratulated and thanked the police for the discovery. Expressing her relief that the statues had been found in one piece, Lady Archer told Varsity she was “really delighted to have been rung by Cambridgeshire police on Monday evening”. “My husband and I are extremely lucky”, she added. Police had initially thought that the sculptures, whose material makeup is particularly valuable, may have been transported east to be melted down.

The sentimental value of the sculptures was the principal motivation for the £1,000 reward offered by the Archers for the sculptures’ detection. Speaking to Varsity about the significance of the bronzes to the family, Lady Archer said “we are very fond of both pieces”. “Handstand has been with us since 1986”.

Lady Archer, who is chairman of the Addenbrooke’s NHS Trust, remains adamant that the sculptures will once again be put on display as the central focus of the garden. But she anticipates that “security upgrades will be necessary” if the statues are to remain in the garden in the future.

The sculptor of the bronzes is Christopher Marvell. Marvell gave them to the Archers as a gift in 1998. Thought to be worth tens of thousands of pounds, the extent of the damage done to the sheep and shepherd is not yet known. There is a chance that the statues may require restoration work before they can be returned to the Archers’ garden.

The Old Vicarage, the Archers’ Grantchester home, received a notable visitor last year. Baroness Thatcher, perhaps the only Conservative peer to have occupied more column inches than Jeffrey Archer, unveiled another statue in his garden.
The statue is of Rupert Brooke, the First World War poet, who immortalised the residence in a 1912 poem “The Old Vicarage”. That poem includes the words “Cambridge people rarely smile, / Being urban, squat, and packed with guile”.

Archer congratulated and thanked the police for the discovery

Lord Archer, 66, has pursued a chequered political career. As an undergraduate at Brasenose College, Oxford, he successfully involved The Beatles in his fundraising drive for a then minor charity called Oxfam. In 1969 he became the fifth youngest MP to be elected to the House of Commons.

In 2000 he ran an abortive campaign for London Mayor. Then Conservative leader William Hague famously described Archer as a candidate of “probity and integrity. I’m going to back him all the way”. Some weeks later, in the wake of News of the World allegations, Hague announced “this is the end of politics for Jeffrey Archer. I will not tolerate such behaviour in my party”.

Archer came under considerable press scrutiny during his high profile trial in 2001. He was convicted and sentenced to four years imprisonment for perjury and perverting the course of justice in a 1987 libel action against the Daily Star newspaper. The paper had alleged that Archer had sex with a prostitute in 1986.

He has returned to the media spotlight and is currently one of 12 “famous faces”, along with Ingrid Tarrant, the estranged wife of Chris Tarrant, Stan Collymore and Blur bass guitarist Alex James, to appear in “The Verdict” currently being aired on BBC 2.

Matt Gregory