Biography

Frederick Forsyth (born August 25, 1938) is a British author and occasional political commentator. He is best known for thrillers such as The Day of the Jackal, The Dogs of War, The Odessa File, Icon and The Fist of God.

Born in Ashford, Kent, Forsyth was educated at Tonbridge School. He later attended Granada University in Spain. At the age of 19, he became one of the youngest pilots ever in the Royal Air Force, where he served until 1958.

He then became a reporter, and spent three and a half years working at a small newspaper before joining Reuters in 1961. In 1965, he joined the BBC and was assistant diplomatic correspondent. From July to September 1967, he covered the Biafran War between Biafra and Nigeria.

Forsyth eschews psychological complexity in favour of meticulous plotting, based on detailed factual research. His books are full of information about the technical details of such subjects as money laundering, gun running and identity theft. His novels can read like investigative journalism in fictional guise. His moral vision is a harsh one: the world is made up of predators and prey, and only the strong survive. The novels he wrote in the 1970s are usually regarded as his best work.

His research has caused headaches for governments. In the Day of the Jackal, he describes how the would-be assassin is able to get a new identity card. He visits a church, and looks for a tombstone of someone who was born nearly the same time he was, but died in infancy. He then obtains a birth certificate, and obtains the identity card. In the story, the government didn't cross check requests with a death registry. Unfortunately, this was actually government practice at the time, and Forsyth revealed this in his writings. In the Deceiver, he describes how British agent bug the corpse of an IRA member, so that when other IRA members whisper to the corpse (e.g., "We did great bombing that school five years ago"), the British secret service was getting it all down. Journalists pressed the British government to ask if this had ever been done, and the British government was forced to admit that indeed it had.

Forsyth is a Eurosceptic (i.e., he is critical of the EU), and is regarded by some as a political conservative, although he declared in an interview "you can call me a right Labourite or a left Tory" and may be more accurately described an an ideoskeptic centrist. He is an occasional radio broadcaster on political issues, and has also written several op-ed pieces for newspapers throughout his career.

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Universitat de València Press
Creada: 15/10/2008 Última Actualización: 05/11/2008

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