Frederick Forsyth always claimed that when, in early 1970, as an unemployed foreign correspondent, he sat down at a portable typewriter and “bashed out” The Day of the Jackal, he “never had the slightest intention of becoming a novelist”.
Forsyth, who has died aged 86, also became well known as a political and social commentator, often with acerbic views on the European Union, international terrorism, security matters and the status of Britain’s armed forces, but it is for his thrillers that he will be best remembered.
