The Day Of The Jackal author Frederick Forsyth dies
Best-selling author Frederick Forsyth, known for thriller novels including The Day Of The Jackal, has died at the age of 86, his agent has said.
"We mourn the passing of one of the world's greatest thriller writers," Jonathan Lloyd said in a statement.
Forsyth published more than 25 books, also including The Odessa File and The Dogs of War, and sold 75 million books around the world, he said.
His publisher Bill Scott-Kerr said: "Still read by millions across the world, Freddie's thrillers define the genre and are still the benchmark to which contemporary writers aspire. He leaves behind a peerless legacy which will continue to excite and entertain for years to come."
Forsyth was an RAF pilot before becoming a war correspondent for the BBC and Reuters, and revealed in 2015 he also worked for British intelligence agency MI6 for more than 20 years.
Many of his fictional plots drew on his real-life experiences around the world.
He made his name with his first novel, 1971's The Day Of The Jackal, which he wrote when he was out of work.
"[I was] skint, in debt, no flat, no car, no nothing and I just thought, 'How do I get myself out of this hole?' And I came up with probably the zaniest solution - write a novel," he said.
It is a gripping tale, set in 1963, about an Englishman hired to assassinate the French president at the time, Charles de Gaulle.
The Day Of The Jackal was turned into a 1973 film starring Edward Fox as the Jackal, and then became a TV drama starring Eddie Redmayne last year.
This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly. Please refresh the page for the fullest version.
You can receive Breaking News on a smartphone or tablet via the BBC News App. You can also follow @BBCBreaking on X to get the latest alerts.
Frederick Forsyth reveals spy past
Lee Child: Why Forsyth's Jackal changed thriller writing
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
15 minutes ago
- Yahoo
British Netflix series Adolescence to be shown in French schools, says minister of education
Following UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer welcoming plans to air Netflix's hit show Adolescence in secondary schools, France is following suit, with French Minister of Education Élisabeth Borne stating yesterday that the mini-series will be screened from secondary school level upwards. In an interview for LCI news channel, Borne explained that the producer of the series 'gave us the rights' and that the Ministry of Education was therefore going to 'offer five educational sequences for young people based on this series'.These extracts from Adolescence, which have already been shown in British schools to stimulate debate and try to 'prevent young boys from being dragged into a whirlpool of hatred and misogyny,' are 'very representative of the violence that can exist among young people', according to Borne. The aim is to help raise awareness of the problem of 'overexposure to screens and the trivialisation of violence on these social networks,' as well as the spread of masculinist theories and misogyny, argues Borne. The four-part series follows how a father deals with the fallout of his 13-year-old son being suspected of stabbing one of his classmates to death. Beyond the spot-on acting, the show has felt like a cultural wake-up call, as it has prompted a wider discussion about toxic masculinity and the devastating influence of the so-called 'manosphere' on young minds who are faced with websites and online forums promoting misogyny and ultra-conservative models of masculinity that flirt with far-right ideologies. When it was confirmed that Netflix would be making the series available to all UK secondary schools, former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson wrote a column for the Daily Mail saying that he didn't see the good in the initiative, calling the show 'tosh'. He wrote: 'In making this announcement with full prime ministerial authority amid the ancient solemnity of the cabinet room, Keir Starmer has perfectly encapsulated the fundamental flatulence of the government, and its emetic finger-wagging mixture of humbug and wokery.' Johnson went on to say that he believes the move to show the series in school time demonstrates the government's 'cruel indifference to the real educational needs of children today,' adding: 'In case you haven't watched Adolescence I can save you the bother. It's tosh - well-acted tosh.' Predictably, Johnson also introduced race to his argument, saying that 'unlike the teenage couple in this drama, the victims and perpetrators are disproportionately young black males.' The show's co-creator Jack Thorne has already spoken out on this theory, saying, 'It's absurd to say that (knife crime) is only committed by black boys. It's not true and history shows a lot of cases of kids from all races committing these crimes.' Thorne also stated that the goal of the show was not about 'making a point about race' but to make a point 'about masculinity.' 'We're trying to get inside a problem,' he added. 'We're not saying this is one thing or another, we're saying that this is about boys.' The decision to show the series in French schools comes after Laëtitia Curetti, who has a 13-year-old son, wrote to Borne and launched an online petition to have the series shown in secondary schools across France. Curetti stated she believes the series could be an 'excellent educational tool' to raise awareness of the dangers of social networking, sexism, bullying and violence in schools. The discussion surrounding knife crime has increased since the success of the series in France. It has been further amplified after a 16-year-old stabbed a high school student to death and injured three other fellow students at the lycée Notre-Dame de Toutes Aides in Nantes on 24 April. "My thoughts go out first to the teenager who lost her life, to the three students who were injured, and I want to express all my support and solidarity to these victims, their families and their loved ones," declared Borne at the school, before paying tribute to the "establishment staff who intervened and neutralized the attacker." French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau spoke of "a tragedy that rocks us." He said he was "appalled" and "shocked" by "the violence that has been unleashed," before adding that the tragic incident was "not a mere news item but a societal issue."
Yahoo
22 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Explosive detonation training in progress in Decatur
DECATUR, Ill. (WCIA) — Residents living near the ICAT Training Center in Decatur might have had an unusual start to their day on Monday. On Monday morning, the Macon County Emergency Management Agency announced that there was an 'explosive ordnance training' in progress on the south side of Decatur. Forsyth couple died from gunshot wounds, autopsy finds The training was taking place on rural property at the ICAT Training Center, according to the sheriff's office. The training center is located at 3120 S. Business Route 51 in Decatur. There is no threat to the public, according to the Macon County EMA. WCIA reached out to the EMA's office for more information but did not immediately receive a response back. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
30 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Frederick Forsyth: Life as a thriller writer, fighter pilot, journalist and spy
Frederick Forsyth, who has died at the age of 86, wrote meticulously researched thrillers which sold in their millions. A former fighter pilot, journalist and spy, many of his books were based on his own experience. He wove intricate technical details into his stories, without detracting from the lightning pace of his plots. His research often embarrassed the authorities, who were forced to admit that some of the shady tactics he revealed were used in real-life espionage. Frederick McCarthy Forsyth was born on 25 August 1938 in Ashford, Kent. The only child of a furrier, he dealt with loneliness by immersing himself in adventure stories. Among his favourites were the works John Buchan and H Rider Haggard, but Forsyth adored Ernest Hemingway's book on bullfighters, Death in the Afternoon. He was so captivated that - at the age of 17 - he went to Spain and started practising with a cape. He never actually fought a bull. Instead, he spent five months at the University of Granada before returning to do his national service with the RAF. Having spent years dreaming of becoming a pilot, Forsyth lied about his age so he could fly de Havilland Vampire jets. In 1958, he joined the Eastern Daily Press as a local journalist. Three years later, he moved to the Reuters news agency. At Tonbridge School, Forsyth had excelled in foreign languages but little else. Fluent in French, German, Spanish, and Russian, he was a born foreign correspondent. Posted to Paris, he covered a number of stories relating to assassination attempts on the life of France's President Charles de Gaulle, by members of the Organisation de l'Armee Secrete (OAS). The group of ex-army personnel were angered at de Gaulle's decision to give independence to Algeria after many of their comrades had died fighting Algerian nationalists. Forsyth called the OAS "white colonialists and neo-fascists". And he decided that, if they really wanted to kill de Gaulle, they would have to hire a professional assassin. Forsyth joined the BBC in 1965. Two years later, he was sent to Nigeria to cover the civil war that followed the secession of the south-eastern region of Biafra. When the fighting dragged on far longer than had been expected, Forsyth asked permission to stay and cover it. According to his autobiography, the BBC told him "it is not our policy to cover this war". "I smelt news management," he said. "I don't like news management." He quit his job and continued to cover the war as a freelance reporter for the next two years. He chronicled his experiences in The Biafra Story, which was published in 1969. He later claimed that, while in Nigeria, he began working for MI6, a relationship that continued for two decades. He also become friendly with a number of mercenaries, who taught him how to get a false passport, obtain a gun and break an enemy's neck. All these tricks of the trade would be incorporated in a tale of an attempted assassination of President de Gaulle, The Day of the Jackal, which he pounded out in his bedsit on an old typewriter in just 35 days. He spent months trying to get it published but faced a string of rejections. "For starters, de Gaulle was still alive," he said, "so readers already knew a fictional assassination plot set in 1963 couldn't succeed." Eventually, a publisher risked a short print run and sales of the book, described once as "an assassin's manual", took off, first in the UK and then in the US. The Day of the Jackal showcased what would become the traditional hallmarks of a Forsyth thriller. It wove together fact and fiction, often using the names of real individuals and events. The Jackal's forgery of a British passport, using the name of a dead child taken from a churchyard, was perfectly feasible in the days before electronic databases and cross-checking. The tale was made into an award-winning film in 1973, staring Edward Fox as the anonymous gunman. Forsyth followed up his success with The Odessa File, the story of a German reporter attempting to track down Eduard Roschmann - a notorious Nazi nicknamed the "Butcher of Riga" - who is protected by a secret society of former SS men known as Odessa. As part of his research, Forsyth travelled to Hamburg posing as a South African arms dealer. "I managed to penetrate their world and was feeling rather proud of myself," he later said. "What I didn't know was that the (contact) had passed a bookshop shortly after our meeting. And there, in the window, was The Day of the Jackal, with a great big picture of me on the back cover." The film of the book led to the identification of the real "Butcher of Riga", who was living in Argentina - after one of his neighbours went to see it at the local cinema. He was arrested by the Argentinian authorities, but skipped bail and fled to Paraguay. The book also mentioned a hoard of Nazi gold that was exported to Switzerland in 1944. Twenty-five years after publication, the Jewish World Congress discovered this passage and, eventually, located gold valued at £1bn. According to the Sunday Times, Forsyth's third novel, The Dogs of War, drew on his experience of organising a coup in Africa. The newspaper reported that Forsyth had once spent $200,000 hiring a boat and recruiting European and African soldiers of fortune for a raid designed to oust the President of Equatorial Guinea in 1972. The plan was said to have failed when the arrangements broke down and the soldiers were intercepted by the Spanish police in the Canary Islands, 3,000 miles from their objective. Then came Devil's Alternative, in which Britain's first female prime minister, Joan Carpenter, was firmly based on Margaret Thatcher, a politician Forsyth greatly admired. She later appeared, under her real name, in four Forsyth novels. There was a move into biography in 1982 with Emeka, the life story of Forsyth's friend Col Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, the head of state of Biafra during that country's brief independence. In 1984, he returned to the novel with The Fourth Protocol: a complex tale of a Soviet plot to influence the British general election and install a hard-left Labour government. The book so impressed Sir Michael Caine that he persuaded Forsyth to allow a film version, in which the veteran actor starred alongside Pierce Brosnan. In the late 1980s, Forsyth separated from his first wife, the former model Carole Cunningham and was photographed alongside the actress Faye Dunaway. The Negotiator, published in 1991, continued the successful run while The Deceiver, the tale of a maverick but brilliant MI6 agent, was made into a BBC mini-series. After two more thrillers, The Fist of God and Icon, Forsyth took an abrupt detour with The Phantom of Manhattan: a sequel to the Phantom of the Opera, which had been a successful musical. It was not a great success but, in 2010, Andrew Lloyd Webber took elements of it for his musical follow-up to Phantom, Love Never Dies. A second set of short stories, The Veteran, also had mixed reviews but Forsyth bounced back in his usual style with Avenger, a 2003 political thriller and, three years later, The Afghan, which had links with the earlier Fist of God. By now, Forsyth had established a reputation as a broadcaster and political pundit. He was a frequent guest on the BBC's topical debate programme Question Time, as someone who held views on the right of the political spectrum. A committed Eurosceptic, he once derailed former Prime Minister Ted Heath on the programme - after proving that he had indeed, despite his denials, once signed a document agreeing to transfer UK gold reserves to Frankfurt. On turning 70, the pace of his writing began to slow. The Cobra, published in 2010, saw the return of some of the characters from Avenger. In 2013, Forsyth published The Kill List, a fast-moving tale built round a Muslim fanatic called The Preacher, whose online videos encouraged young Muslims to carry out a series of killings. He wrote all his books on a typewriter and refused to use the internet for his research. Ironically, his 18th novel, The Fox - published in 2018 - was a spy thriller about a gifted computer hacker. Forsyth announced it was to be his final book, but he later came out of self-imposed retirement after the death of his second wife, Sandy, in 2024. He said he was writing another adventure, and even suggested a raffle might give someone the chance to name a character after themselves. Having sold the film rights for £20,000 in the 1970s, Forsyth received no payment for Eddie Redmayne's version of The Day of the Jackal when it was re-imagined for television last year on Sky. Well into his 80s, he had long since agreed to stop research trips to far-flung parts of the world - when a trip to Guinea-Bissau left him with an infection that nearly cost him a leg. "It is a bit drug-like, journalism," he admitted. "I don't think that instinct ever dies." It was an instinct that made his life as full and exciting as his thrillers. The Day Of The Jackal author Frederick Forsyth dies Lee Child: Why Forsyth's Jackal changed thriller writing Frederick Forsyth reveals spy past
