Frederick Forsyth made a breakthrough in 1971 with "The Day of the Jackal", a political thriller about a planned assassination attempt on France's president de Gaulle, which quickly became a bestseller and film classic.
He was born in 1938 in British Kent and initially trained as a fighter pilot, at the age of 19 he was one of the youngest in the Royal Air Force, before he changed to become a journalist.
In the beginning of his career, he worked for Reuters and BBC, among other things as a correspondent in France and Africa. During the Biafran war, he took an open stance for the breakaway region Biafra, something that led to conflict with BBC and initiated his career as an author.
His thrillers were based on thorough research and often with real conflicts as a background. The books sold in tens of millions of copies worldwide, among the most well-known are "The Odessa File", "The Dogs of War" and "Avenger".
The breakthrough novel "The Day of the Jackal" was filmed as early as two years after its release, in 1973, with Edward Fox in the lead role and became a classic within the spy genre. In 1997, a remake was made, where Bruce Willis played the title role and Richard Gere participated – but that version received a more lukewarm reception.
In his autobiography, Forsyth revealed in 2015 that he had been in contact with the British intelligence service MI6 for more than two decades of his life. He remained an active social debater and wrote novels until he was in his 70s.
