Forsyth leaves big void

Master thriller writer Frederick Forsyth died last week. Many readers of a certain age will remember him for stories like The Day of the Jackal and The Odessa File.

He wrote many other stories of course, all as successful, becoming one of those rare authors who was able to make two fortunes in one lifetime – after losing the first to his financial advisor.

Forsyth, who had no pretensions about his writing – he wrote to make a living as all the best ones do – never strayed too far from his journalistic roots.

He had incredible sources, went into the field to do his research and put in the hard yards in front of his typewriter.

Forsyth’s stories

His stories often imitated his own life. In his 2015 memoir The Outsider: My Life in Intrigue, he admitted that he had done work for British intelligence.

Much has been written since last week about assignations, à la James Bond with a sultry Czech agent, but not much about his role in this country, in particular, just before the transition to democracy in 1994.

The British, like the Americans, were very curious about what would happen to the six nuclear bombs that the apartheid regime had built from the 1970s onwards.

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Forsyth’s relationship with foreign minister

Forsyth, who had developed a convivial relationship over the years with then foreign minister Pik Botha, was sent out in the South African winter of 1992, so tensibly on a hunting trip to the Kalahari with his two sons, when the British discovered that Botha would be spending part of the parliamentary recess shooting there.

Booked into the same lodge, their paths would cross at meal times, until finally, on the last night around the braai, Forsyth broached the question as off-handedly as he could.

“Freddie,” laughed Botha, “you can tell your government we are going to destroy the lot.”

Botha had known precisely why Forsyth was there and made full use of the opportunity to send a very important message back to London.

His work

As a writer, Forsyth’s work was often a case of life imitating art; Simon Mann’s ill-fated Wonga coup to Equatorial Guinea felt like something straight out of The Dogs of War, which is, ironically, where Forsyth had set the novel, while the Jackal became the nom de guerre of the most infamous terrorist of his day, Ilich Ramírez Sánchez.

They don’t make writers like Forsyth anymore. We’re all the poorer for that.

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