British thriller novelist Frederick Forsyth, 86, died on June 9. Best-known for The Day of the Jackal (made into a 1973 film), Forsyth started his career as a journalist and war correspondent for the BBC and Reuters (and an MI6 spy). He never wanted to be a writer, he said, but the success of Jackal set him on that road. Many of Forsyth’s books became feature or TV-movies: The Odessa File, The Dogs of War, The Fourth Protocol, The Devil’s Day, Icon, Avenger. Forsyth was an outspoken right-winger: “Touch wood, no one has yet called me out, saying my books are un-woke,” he said last year. “Woke is stupid rather than sinful, but plain stupid. What JK Rowling said about who women were and weren’t seemed to me obviously true, yet we are not allowed to say that any more. She has been given a terrible time.” I wonder what he thought “woke” meant? To me, it just means being polite and not intentionally hurting people’s feelings. Anyway, he’s dead now, which is as “un-woke” as one can get.
