It was sad to read in the news the other day of the passing of journalist and novelist Frederick Forsyth. He was 86 years old and had published more than 25 books. I’ve read quite a few of his novels and I wrote a segment about him some time ago in a blog post about novels that were rejected by publishers. A number of his books were made into films and so many people must be familiar with his work.
Forsyth did his national service in the RAF and was commissioned as an Acting Pilot Officer in 1956. After leaving the RAF he became a journalist working for the news agency Reuters and later he joined the BBC. He was the perfect choice for a foreign correspondent as he spoke numerous languages including French, German and Russian. In 1967 he was reporting on the war between Biafra and Nigeria when the BBC decided they were no longer interested in that particular war. Forsyth resigned from the BBC and continued to report on the war as a freelance. He even admitted later that this was when he was recruited by MI6 as an informant.
His most famous book and actually one that he struggled to get published was The Day of the Jackal. He apparently had no interest in becoming a novelist but turned to fiction as he was out of work and in dire straits financially. The Day of the Jackal was rejected numerous times but finally one publisher decided to try a limited print run. The book took off first in the UK and then in the USA. It was a mixture of fact and fiction and Forsyth’s description of how to obtain a fake passport was used by John Darwin, the man who faked his own death in a canoe and later tried to make a new life in Panama. This true story was made into a book and TV mini series called The Thief, his Wife and a Canoe.
Forsyth followed up with The Odessa File, a book about the Odessa organisation which helped former nazis escape detection from the authorities after World War II. He wrote numerous other books but when The Day of the Jackal was re-imagined as a TV series recently on Sky TV, he earned nothing as he had already signed away the TV and film rights with the earlier screen version.
The Day of the Jackal
It was a very long time ago when I first read this book. Someone once called it an assassin’s handbook although I’m not sure that’s really fair. The book is set in the early 60s. The OAS was a terrorist organisation made up of ex-army personnel who were angered at De Gaulle’s decision to give independence to Algeria after many of their comrades had died fighting Algerian nationalists. They were trying to assassinate De Gaulle but their organisation had been penetrated by French Intelligence. To prevent any leaks the OAS top leadership decide to hole up in a hotel and arrange for a professional assassin to kill De Gaulle. The book follows the assassin, code named Jackal, as he plans the murder step by step. The French secret service however decide to kidnap a man who functioned as an aide to the leadership. Under torture he revealed the basic plot but how could the French track down the assassin?
The Jackal arranges three fake identities and the author explains meticulously how he does this. He met with a specialist rifle maker and explained how he wanted a rifle that could be dismantled and fitted into a series of metal tubes, the full import of this is only revealed on the planned day of the assassination.
The Jackal also asks for a number to ring for up to date information and the OAS arrange for an informant to seduce a member of the government and pass vital info to the Jackal.
Forsyth apparently wrote the book in 35 days and continued with a similar non stop workflow for all his subsequent books. He didn’t like the writing process and was anxious to get it all over with as quickly as possible. Even so, the result is a tense and gripping read. Forsyth’s books are heavily researched and often including real-life procedures, political contexts, or military operations. He includes authentic settings and terminology that lend a strong sense of realism to his stories. The characters in his books though are usually pretty functional, just there to carry the plot forwards although in The Jackal we find perhaps his most rounded characters, certainly in the few books that I have read.
The Day of the Jackal was made into a film in 1973 directed by Fred Zinneman.
The Odessa File
Again, it’s a long time since I have read this book but it’s really well put together with a real twist at the end. It’s about a German journalist who discovers a diary written by an old Jewish man who has committed suicide. The man was a former concentration camp prisoner and killed himself after seeing a sadistic SS officer known as ‘the butcher of Riga’ walking free in the city.
The journalist decides to try and track the SS man down and finds out that the nazis run an organisation known as the Odessa, which helps former SS men evade justice, assisting them with fake papers and even travel to friendly countries.
The journalist decides to pose as an ex-SS man seeking help from the Odessa and this leads him on a very dangerous path indeed.
The Odessa File was also made into a film starring John Voight as the journalist and the resulting publicity brought about the exposure of the real life ‘Butcher of Riga’, on whom the fictional character was based. Eduard Roschmann was arrested by Argentine police but then skipped bail and escaped to Paraguay.
The Fourth Protocol
I started reading this book a while ago and like all of Forsyth’s other books it is a very exciting read. I was also surprised to find that it was really quite different to the film which starred Michael Caine.
In the book, a professional jewel thief robs the safe of safe of a well to do civil servant. He takes away some pretty expensive jewels but breaks a golden rule by also taking what appears to be an expensive hand crafted leather briefcase.
It turns out that hidden in the briefcase are some top secret documents which the civil servant has been passing to a member of the South African security forces.
This gentleman then organises a group of thugs to find the case but the jewel thief is alerted just in time and is able to round up some tough guys of his own to combat the thugs. After finding out the thugs were after the briefcase, he discovers the secret documents and mails them to the authorities.
Robert Preston, our local MI5 man, then has to find out where the documents came from and who has been leaking them.
Eventually, Preston discovers that the civil service man was passing the documents to a south African diplomat who was also a Russian spy.
This whole episode was glossed over in the film and in fact in the film version it is John Preston played by Michael Caine who robs the safe forcing the traitor to meet with his contact.
The main story though involves a Soviet plot to destabilise NATO by causing an atomic explosion at a US Air Force base in the UK. Components for the bomb are to be smuggled into the country, set up at a safe house just by the air force base and later detonated.
Luckily, our man Preston manages to save the day.
Once again, this is an excellent read peppered with fascinating information about the workings of spies in MI5 and MI6 and also the KGB.
This is an autobiography by Fenella Fielding, co-written with Simon McKay, and the title comes from her part in Carry On Screaming when she played a seductive character, possibly derived from the Adams Family, Valeria. In one scene Valeria tries to seduce Harry H Corbett standing in for the absent Sid James as a detective. Valeria asks ‘do you mind if I smoke?’ and then rather than smoking a cigarette, a cloud of smoke seems to arise from her body and envelop her. Harry H Corbett adds ‘just when I was trying to give it up’ before embracing her in the smoke.
In Fenella’s book above, she mentions that she hoped her book would not go the way of a lot of other showbiz autobiographies, interesting at first but then dissolving into lists of plays and films and other celebrities. Sadly, that seems to be the way this book does go, even so I enjoyed it.
I do love my showbiz biographies and autobiographies and one I picked up a while back was an autobiography by Dora Bryan. I love Dora from her many appearances in British films but my favourite film is probably 
This final book is the odd one out in this quartet of British comedy stars. It’s a biography rather than an autobiography. I don’t think Tony Hancock ever wrote one.
The Bay of Pigs was a great disaster for Kennedy. He inherited the invasion plans from the Eisenhower administration in which Vice President Nixon was a prime mover. Nixon felt that an invasion would boost his chances in the election contest against Kennedy but the CIA seemed to be relying on the assassination of Castro to kick off the invasion but that planned murder, for whatever reason, never happened.
Ten Days to Destiny by John Costello
This book was the sequel to another book about Bill Clinton. The first one dealt with Clinton’s early life and his election to the presidency; this one takes us through his first four years as president. The author takes us through the years of the Clinton White House and documents the issues like Troopergate; when the former Governor Clinton’s State Troopers revealed the comings and goings of Bill’s various mistresses, as well as the disaster of his healthcare reform work which he entrusted to his wife Hillary. The public clearly weren’t keen on Clinton’s ‘co-president’ – his wife, and their healthcare proposals were rejected by Congress. The mid term elections were another disaster for Clinton and the Democrats and the book goes on to show how Clinton turned the final two years of his first term presidency around and was able to win a second term.
Encore Provence by Peter Mayle
Many have speculated about his true sexuality but it’s clear that Larry enjoyed being labelled as camp rather than gay. The main relationship in his life was with his sister who became a mother figure to him when his adoptive mother died. The two lived next door to each other for many years in later life.
This book was a Christmas gift from Liz. She knows I’m a big film fan and I do love reading about the background to films and how they are made. Arnold is from Austria and he tells us a little of his life there but mainly focuses on his desire to be a great bodybuilder and to eventually go to America. There is a lot of talk about the process of competitive bodybuilding and the different muscles, muscle definition, reps and squats and all that stuff. Arnold eventually wins various competitions and is wondering how he can compete in the USA when he gets an invitation to do just that. The bodybuilding industry is a close knit one and there seem to be various people welcoming him to California, helping him to find a place to stay and so on. He wins more competitions and makes a little money. He starts a mail order business selling magazines and pamphlets about himself and his body building techniques. He brings one of his Austrian friends over and the two begin a bricklaying and home improvement business. His big break is getting a film part as Hercules and even though the production eventually goes bust it seems to give him a taste of the film business and he wants more. He plays Conan the Barbarian in the film version of a comic book hero and pretty soon he plays the Terminator and goes on to success after success, even becoming governor of California.
This is not a book I brought on holiday but one I found on the shelves of our rented villa in Lanzarote. I started reading it when I got a little bored with Arnold Schwarzenegger and liked it so much I just carried on to the end. It is a real pleasure to read something by a master wordsmith and I enjoyed every minute even though I had read this novel years ago. Young Pip, apprenticed to be a blacksmith, is invited to the home of an eccentric rich woman, Miss Havisham, purely for her amusement. Later in his young life he finds he has ‘great expectations’ and is to inherit a remarkable property. He is taken to London to be brought up as a gentleman and although he is told that his benefactor has asked to remain a secret, he naturally assumes it is Miss Havisham. At the beginning of the book, Pip encounters Magwitch, an escaped convict on the marshes near his home. He compels Pip to bring him some food and a file. He is captured and transported to Australia and later we find, much to Mr Pip’s shock and amazement that Magwitch is the mysterious benefactor.
This is a collection of globe trotting stories from John Simpson who has travelled the world as a journalist for the BBC. These though are travel stories with a difference, for instance in the first chapter he talks about airports, not the airports that I generally use, tourist destinations like Spain and Greece. The ones Mr Simpson mentions are airports in war torn Angola and Bosnia, and places like Kabul in Afghanistan and other places where he has had his passport and papers routinely torn up or thrown into a river by laughing revolutionaries and mercenaries. He tells us about headlong dashes to catch flights, including one somewhere in eastern Europe where he was in such a mess after weeks living rough the stewardess was reluctant to let him on board, especially as he had a first class seat. His fellow passenger in the next seat asked to be moved. Luckily John wasn’t flying on a budget airline like the ones I travel with.
There is a process by which I choose books to take with me on holiday. I like to think it’s a thoughtful process combining different genres of books, some novels, maybe the odd classic, and some biographies and autobiographies. What actually happens is that the day before our trip I’ll just grab something near to hand that I know I haven’t read yet and shove it in my suitcase. Anyway, that’s how I ended up with the books you see above. Last year I read The Rainmaker by John Grisham and I thought it was a pretty good read. I must have mentioned that to Liz so she filed that away and got me a stack of Grisham novels for my last birthday. The Firm isn’t a bad read and in my case it was a nice change of pace after reading Dickens and John Simpson’s globetrotting memories. It’s a good story but like a lot of Grisham’s works, its more plot driven than character driven. The characters are sort of bland templates that I’ve recognised in a lot of his novels and so far I’ve only read three. Anyway, characters aside, this is a really original story about a young guy who graduates from law school and gets head hunted into a firm he has never heard of but which offers tremendous financial benefits, a brand new BMW, and an ultra cheap mortgage as well as other financial bonuses. The downside as he comes to learn later is that the firm is just a cover operation to launder money for a big mafia crime family and the FBI wants our hero James McDeere, to help them.
I’m not sure I would normally have picked up this book if I hadn’t run out of books to read. I saw this on the shelf in our rented villa and Liz had read it and mentioned about numerous references to old black and white films which were right down my alley, apparently.
Peter Sellers by Alexander Walker
Bill Clinton: An American Journey by Nigel Hamilton
An Autobiography by Agatha Christie
A long time ago I picked up A Right Royal Bastard somewhere in a charity shop. I have a feeling it was whilst walking round Skipton a few months ago but anyway, I didn’t know much about Sarah Miles except that she was a film actress and had appeared in Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines and also Ryan’s Daughter, that latter film being one of director David Lean’s less appealing films. Apparently, as Sarah reveals in Serves Me Right, Lean was so upset by the bad reviews he didn’t make another film until A Passage to India, many years later.
I wrote in an earlier post about being a fan of the 
I always find it interesting just how I seem to hook up with a particular book. In this case I had an email from the ITV Hub telling me about a great new series of Manhunt and how I could watch the previous one on the ITV hub. Now what criteria ITV uses to send me an email like that I don’t know because not only had I never watched Manhunt, I’d never even heard of it. Looking at the ITV website I found that Manhunt was a three part thriller based on the real life case of killer Levi Bellfield. Having nothing more interesting lined up to watch that evening, Liz and I settled down to watch and actually got pretty interested, so much so that I immediately went to Abebooks and ordered a copy of the book that the series had been based on. It had been written, in fact written quite well by former Chief Inspector Colin Sutton who was in charge of the real life investigation of a young French student murdered in Twickenham, London.
page is for writers to talk about stuff, you know, publishing, agents, even actual writing but writers being a self-indulgent selfish lot, they usually just post links to their new books. Being similarly selfish I tend to add links to my new blog posts but on this occasion, I noticed something different, someone had asked a question. What are your 5 favourite books of all time?
Lost Horizon
A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle
A Right Royal Bastard by Sarah Miles.
Alan Turing: The Enigma.
Khrushchev Remembers.
To start with it tells the story of McCartney in deep focus, taking the reader through McCartney’s younger years, his friendship on the school bus with the younger George Harrison and finally meeting the older John Lennon at a village fête in Woolton. Those few years age difference was a big thing to the budding teenage musicians but together they were the nucleus of the Beatles. There were other members, other guitarists and other drummers but when in their late teens they got the chance to play a regular spot in Hamburg, Germany, they needed a drummer and they chose Pete Best, another local lad but a quieter lad who perhaps did not really fit in on a social level with the other three. The Beatles were not well thought of by fellow Liverpool musicians but after long months playing 6 hours a day at a Hamburg night club they gradually became a better and tighter knit musical group.
Not so long ago I read a blog post on the lines of 100 books to read before you die and as now I’m in my sixties I thought I’d better get a move on and read some more. I’m not sure if this book was on the list but I’m sure its author, Graham Greene was. Greene wrote the screenplay for ‘the Third Man’ and later the novel which I’ve always admired so I was very happy indeed to find this book in my Christmas box not so many weeks ago.
One of my all time favourite books was Dickens’ David Copperfield but sadly there are only two of Dickens books I have ever been able to get to grips with, one is the aforementioned Copperfield and the other is this one, Great Expectations. It’s a long time since I have read this book so I was very pleased to find it on the bookshelf of our rented villa rubbing shoulders with books by David Baldacci and Sophie Kinsella.
This book has been an absolute delight, in fact the perfect holiday read. The author tells the story of Niven’s life, pretty much as Niven himself set it down in his best selling autobiography The Moon’s a Balloon. However in this version the author tries to fill in the bits Niven left out of his book and correct many inaccuracies. Niven was notorious for embellishing the truth and the character of ‘Nessie’ to whom Niven lost his virginity in his book was, this author claims, pure fiction. Personally, I find that hard to believe even though no corroboration could be found with David’s many friends and those interviewed for this biography. Nessie seemed to be just such a fundamental part of his life I just don’t see how he could have invented her.
The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe by J. Randy Taraborelli.
My Turn by Norman Wisdom.
Tricks of the Mind by Derren Brown.
Letters from an Unknown Author! 