We writers generally live dull and boring lives, tied to our desks painfully wresting words out of mundane experiences: not so Frederick Forsyth, who has died aged 86.
Freddie’s life was almost as exciting as the plots of one of his bestselling thrillers
Freddie’s life was almost as exciting as the plots of one of his bestselling thrillers, embracing as it did the triple careers of novelist, foreign correspondent, and spy. The other unusual thing about him compared to most other modern writers is that he was a convinced and outspoken small c conservative. Forsyth had a fully justified scorn for the inanities and dangers of the contemporary Left.
I first got to know Freddie around 2000, when I was trying to contact former members of the OAS, the French secret army of right-wing terrorists. That group’s near-miss attempts to assassinate president Charles de Gaulle for his betrayal of the cause of French Algeria formed the subject matter of Forsyth’s first, and best known, thriller: The Day of the Jackal.
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