Frederick Forsyth, the British author of \u201cThe Day of the Jackal\u201d and other bestselling thrillers, has died after a brief illness, his literary agent said Monday. He was 86. <\/p>\n
Jonathan Lloyd, his agent, said Forsyth died at home early Monday surrounded by his family. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe mourn the passing of one of the world\u2019s greatest thriller writers,\u201d Lloyd said. <\/p>\n
Born in Kent, in southern England, in 1938, Forsyth served as a Royal Air Force pilot before becoming a foreign correspondent. He covered the attempted assassination of French President Charles de Gaulle in 1962, which provided inspiration for \u201cThe Day of the Jackal,\u201d his bestselling political thriller about a professional assassin. <\/p>\n
Published in 1971, the book propelled him into global fame. It was made into a film in 1973 starring Edward Fox as the Jackal and more recently a television series starring Eddie Redmayne and Lashana Lynch. <\/p>\n
In 2015, Forsyth told the BBC that he had also worked for the British intelligence agency MI6 for many years, starting from when he covered a civil war in Nigeria in the 1960s. <\/p>\n
Although Forsyth said he did other jobs for the agency, he said he was not paid for his services and \u201cit was hard to say no\u201d to officials seeking information. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe zeitgeist was different,\u201d he told the BBC. \u201cThe Cold War was very much on.\u201d <\/p>\n
He wrote more than 25 books including \u201cThe Afghan,\u201d \u201cThe Kill List,\u201d \u201cThe Dogs of War\u201d and \u201cThe Fist of God\u201d that have sold over 75 million copies, Lloyd said. <\/p>\n
His publisher, Bill Scott-Kerr, said that \u201cRevenge of Odessa,\u201d a sequel to the 1974 book \u201cThe Odessa File\u201d that Forsyth worked on with fellow thriller author Tony Kent, will be published in August. <\/p>\n
\u201cStill read by millions across the world, Freddie\u2019s thrillers define the genre and are still the benchmark to which contemporary writers aspire,\u201d Scott-Kerr said. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Frederick Forsyth, the British author of \u201cThe Day of the Jackal\u201d and other bestselling thrillers, has died after a brief illness, his literary agent said Monday. He was 86. Jonathan Lloyd, his agent, said Forsyth died at home early Monday surrounded by his family. \u201cWe mourn the passing of one of the world\u2019s greatest thriller…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7485,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}