Bestsellers drew on his life as a spy

AS BRITAIN'S best-known thriller writer, Frederick Forsyth never set out to be a novelist.

- Written by KAREN ROCKETT

But after finding himself an out-of-work foreign correspondent, low on funds, and sleeping on a friend's sofa, he began to bash out his first book on a battered old portable typewriter.

"I never really wanted to be a writer, but I was skint, stony broke" he admitted. Just over a month later, The Day Of The Jackal was completed. It was eventually published in 1971, having been rejected by three publishers and withdrawn from a fourth.

Even then there wasn't much faith in it.

Many of the sales staff were concerned that the plot - the assassination of the French president General Charles de Gaulle - was an event that everyone already knew did not happen. However the 1972 paperback edition was eventually reprinted 33 times in 18 years and is still in print today.

It became an international best seller and gained its author the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel. It was made into a film of the same name, with Edward Fox playing the ruthless jackal, and more recently reboted for TV.