However, it emerged yesterday that for 20 years Mr Forsyth, now a gentleman farmer and scourge of the euro-loving left, has been collecting Lowry's views of industrial streetscapes and spindly dogs.
Next month he will put up nine of his Lowry paintings at a Christie's auction. He is already a millionaire from his bestsellers, including The Day of the Jackal, The Odessa File and The Dogs of War, but the collection is expected to bring in at least another million.
Yesterday he referred back to Christie's all calls about his decision to sell. The auction house said he intended to launch into another area of collecting, but it did not know which one.
He said of Lowry's appeal: "There is something about the figures in his pictures that intrigues me; all seem to be locked in thought, some pressing forward upon a personal errand, some gazing melancholy into the distance, others about to say something to the figure next to them. They are alive with the concerns of every day, but caught and locked into perpetuity by Lowry's gentle eye."
Northern River Scene, 1959, regarded as the strongest of the collection, is estimated at up to £300,000. Lowry was commissioned to paint Lincoln but set a factory, instead of the cathedral, at the heart of the composition.
Industrial Scene was one of 16 works by contemporary artists reproduced to decorate Lyons tearooms.
Frederick Forsyth was born in Ashford, Kent, in 1938. He became a journalist, doing foreign correspondent work for Reuters and the BBC. When he returned to London in 1969 he expanded a short story he had written - about repeated attempts to assassinate Charles de Gaulle - into The Day of the Jackal.
He is now a radio and print political commentator, denouncing the Labour government on subjects including the farmer and the pound, which must be preserved, and the fox, which should be hunted.
