Frederick Forsyth: 1938-2025

We lost a giant.

The last book I read of him was his first one: The Biafra Story: The Making of an African Legend. It is not a work of fiction, but a real journalistic tale of that African conflict and the way is was criminally mishandled by the UK. It was such and indictment, the first run of the book was dropped by the publisher.

Great movies were made from his books with The Dogs of War, The Day of the Jackal and The Odessa Files probably my favorites.

If I could, I want to recommend you search for a first edition of The Fourth Protocol. They can still be located in EBay and other places. In case you did not know, subsequent editions of that book were “edited” to remove the very interesting Chapter 4 where Kim Philby explains how the British Labour Party was infiltrated by the Soviets and was working to undermine and bring down the United Kingdom. Forsyth himself did not know it was removed till decades later when somebody was listening to the audiobook and noticed the whole chapter missing from it and then saw the same in later printed editions of the book and told Forsyth.

That on itself should give you more than an indication of the power of his writing and more than likely, its accuracy.