Prolific British novelist Frederick Forsyth, best known for 1971’s TheDay of the Jackal, which was adapted for the screen in 1973 and again in 2024, has died. He was 86.
Forsyth died at home Monday after a brief illness, his literary agent, Jonathan Lloyd, confirmed. He was surrounded by his family at the time of his death.
“We mourn the passing of one of the world’s greatest thriller writers,” Lloyd said in a statement, per The Times. “Only a few weeks ago I sat with him as we watched a new and moving documentary of his life — In My Own Words, to be released later this year on BBC1 — and was reminded of an extraordinary life, well lived.”
Born August 25, 1938, in Ashford, Kent, Forsyth served as a pilot in the Royal Air Force before becoming a journalist. He was hired by Reuters in 1961 before moving over to the BBC in 1965, where he worked as an assistant diplomatic correspondent.
During much of his early career with Reuters, he reported on French affairs and the attempted assassination of President Charles de Gaulle. After transitioning to BBC, however, he was sent to Nigeria to report on the Biafran war.
“My brief was to report the all-conquering march of the Nigerian army,” Forsyth recalled in a 2020 op-ed for The Guardian. “It did not happen. Naively, I filed this. When my report was broadcast our high commissioner complained to the CRO in London, who passed it on to the BBC — which accused me of pro-rebel bias and recalled me to London.”
Frustrated by the BBC’s “slavishness” to Whitehall, he quit and returned to Biafra in 1968 as a freelance reporter. There, he began working for MI6 as an intelligence “asset,” he revealed in his 2015 autobiography, The Outsider.
“There was nothing weird about it,” he clarified at a live event in October 2015, “it was the Cold War. An awful lot of the strength of British intelligence came from the number of volunteers. A businessman might be going to a trade fair in a difficult-to-enter city and he’d be approached, quite gently, with a courteous, ‘If you would be so kind as to accept an envelope under your hotel door and bring it home …’ so that was what I did. I ran errands.”
In 1971, Forsyth published his debut novel, The Day of the Jackal, which followed an assassin’s mission to kill President de Gaulle. It was later adapted into a movie, starring Edward Fox, in 1973. It more recently inspired Peacock’s 2024 thriller series of the same name, led by Eddie Redmayne.
His experience as a war correspondent continued providing inspiration for his other popular novels, including The Odessa File, The Fourth Protocol, The Dogs of War, The Devil's Alternative, The Fist of God, Icon, The Veteran, Avenger, The Afghan, The Cobra and The Kill List.
Forsyth’s series of novels has sold more than 75 million copies worldwide. He was awarded the CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in 1977 for his contributions to literature.
“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’s publisher, Bill Scott-Kerr, added in a statement.
Scott-Kerr called working with Forsyth “one of the great pleasures of my professional life.”
“The flow of brilliant plots and ideas aside, he was the most professional writer an editor could hope for.”
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