RIP: Frederick Forsyth dies aged 86.
“Appalled at what he saw and using his experience during a stint as a Secret Service agent, he wrote his first and perhaps most famous novel,” the agent added.
That novel, The Day of the Jackal, was published in 1972 and propelled Forsyth to the status of a global bestselling author.
It has since been adapted into a film and more recently, a TV series starring Eddie Redmayne.
The popular novel remains the first and most enduring of his 16 thrillers and follows a hired assassin who targets Charles de Gaulle, the French president.
The TV adaptation marked the third to reach the screen, following one fronted by Edward Fox in 1973, and another that Forsyth disowns, with Bruce Willis in 1997.
Mr Lloyd said: “He will be greatly missed by his family, his friends, all of us at Curtis Brown and of course his millions of fans around the world – though his books will of course live on forever.”
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Lee Child, a fellow thriller writer, previously described The Day of the Jackal as “the book that broke the mould”.
Mr Forsyth was long known – alongside his books – for his outspokenness on political matters as a Conservative, a supporter of Brexit and a defender of traditional values.
He disliked the “woke” agenda and cancel culture, saying in 2023 that he would be “horrified” if they tried to make the TV adaptation of The Day of the Jackal “woke”.
“Touch wood, no one has yet called me out, saying my books are un-woke,” he told The Telegraph two years ago, adding: “Woke is stupid rather than sinful, but plain stupid.”
He also expressed disdain that JK Rowling was being attacked for her gender-critical views by the three former Harry Potter child stars that she was once close to.
He said he felt “particular anger on her behalf at the three young stars of the Harry Potter films – Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson – for disowning Rowling when she was attacked by trans activists”.
“These idiots were brought from nowhere to star in the films of her work and now they are against her. But without her, they’d be nowhere,” he added.
The original adaptation of The Day of the Jackal, starring Edward Fox, was of course, utterly brilliant filmmaking. As Roger Ebert wrote in 1973, “I wasn’t prepared for how good it really is: it’s not just a suspense classic, but a beautifully executed example of filmmaking. It’s put together like a fine watch. The screenplay meticulously assembles an incredible array of material, and then [Fred] Zinnemann choreographs it so that the story–complicated as it is–unfolds in almost documentary starkness.”