He has long been lauded for the uncanny realism of his spy thrillers, and now Frederick Forsyth is set to reveal the secret of his insider knowledge: he was himself an agent for MI6.
I don’t think I actually knew that but I’d certainly always assumed it….
I thought everyone knew?
Worst secret ever.
In other unfalsifiable claims, Enid Blyton was a Sabre Squadron staff sgt in 22 SAS.
I would have been more surprised if you had named Bruce Fosyth.
Agent? Or operative? There’s a big difference.
I’d always thought he was a lounge lizard.
Is it like me claiming to have been approached by GCHQ for a job?
(All I did, a million years ago, was successfully decrypt a subtle job advert pinned to a board in a Maths Reading Room.)
A Forsyth Saga! I’ll get my coat.
When someone outs himself as a spy, I tend to suspect an insignificant pen-pusher, processing expense claims. You can glean loads of interesting stuff chatting at the bar with people who claim to matter.
There is quite a lot of them with a background in intelligence: W Somerset Maugham, Graham Greene, Ian Fleming, John le Carré. Now we also have Stella Rimmington.
Best regards
In Feb 2003 Forsyth appeared on Question Time and said he was satisfied that Iraq did indeed have WMD. So the one time in his life when he had the chance to make a difference and tell us live that six different intelligence agencies were working off the same fabricated testimony of Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, he let us down. Not much of an intelligence agent then.
‘In Feb 2003 Forsyth appeared on Question Time and said he was satisfied that Iraq did indeed have WMD’.
That would be the same Frederick Forsyth who is now ranting about the ‘lies’ that took us to war twelve years ago? Can’t say I’m surprised about how two-faced he is.
http://www.express.co.uk/comment/columnists/frederick-forsyth/417511/The-truth-about-Iraq-will-finally-come-out
As for the man himself, he’s basically a John Le Carre for the right. His novels have a different slant (insofar as the US and British intelligence services are a force for good and not evil), but the writing has become as cliched and as hackneyed as that of his Guardianista counterpart.
Some folks actually try using the novel Dogs of War as a how to manual to overthrowing African country. Didn’t work out too well.