The Outsider
My Life in Intrigue
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4.7 • 47 Ratings
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
FREDERICK FORSYTH HAS SEEN IT ALL. AND LIVED TO TELL THE TALE…
At eighteen, Forsyth was the youngest pilot to qualify with the RAF.
At twenty-five, he was stationed in East Berlin as a journalist during the Cold War.
Before he turned thirty, he was in Africa controversially covering the bloodiest civil war in living memory.
Three years later, broke and out of work, he wrote his game-changing first novel, The Day of the Jackal. He never looked back.
Forsyth has seen some of the most exhilarating moments of the last century from the inside, travelling the world, once or twice on her majesty’s secret service. He’s been shot at, he’s been arrested, he’s even been seduced by an undercover agent.
But all the while he felt he was an outsider. This is his story.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
British author Forsyth's real life has been almost as thrilling as the stories he's created in his 15 novels. In this collection of autobiographical vignettes, Forsyth details his many once-in-a-lifetime experiences that helped shaped his work, including the inspiration for his debut novel, 1971's spy classic The Day of the Jackal. A twist of fate allowed Forsyth to enter the Royal Air Force his boyhood dream at the unlikely age of 17. He crashed his 1949 MG sports car in 1960 and spent three days in a coma, then received his big break when the Reuters news agency sent him to Paris as a foreign correspondent to cover the uprising against French President Charles de Gaulle. And Forsyth claims to have almost started World War III. Eventually, Forsyth made the switch to broadcast journalism and joined the British Broadcasting Corporation in 1965, deflecting death in the African jungle during the Nigerian Civil War of the late 1960s before turning to fiction. Forsyth packs his stories with history both personal and global, and writes with the charm of a man recounting his escapades to grown grandchildren, making this a riveting and refreshing memoir.
Customer Reviews
The master reflecting
A thoroughly good reflection by the master story teller.
Compelling, well worth the Five Stars
Can it all be true without embllishment
Frederick Forsyth memoir.
A life very well-lived. Forsyth is a born adventurer that is why his fiction rings so true. This book reads like a thriller. I take my hat off to him.
Nigel Brett.