Forsyth happy with place in literary pantheon

By MARGIE THOMSON

Frederick Forsyth. The huge, raised name on the front of 10 mega-selling thrillers is enough to raise the hackles of the literary-minded, but he's not worried. His novels have been likened to journalism, but Freddie (as he's known half-fondly, half-sneeringly in the quality British media) isn't at all bothered. Quite the contrary.

"I think that's right!" he says delightedly. "I don't believe I could have done anything without being a journalist. Investigative reporting and this kind of novel are very close. First cousins."

Forsyth is a material kind of guy. He burrows into contemporary politics and recent history the way the Vietcong burrowed into the ground under the jungles of Vietnam (cunningly, extensively and tirelessly), as he describes in his latest international bestseller, Avenger.

His plots — assassinations, Nazi conspiracies, African mercenaries, crack Soviet agents and, in the most recent, a Serbian warlord who murders an innocent American aid worker in a twisting narrative that stretches back to 'Nam — are all in the realm of the possible, or so he believes.

That's the basis of all his stories, the first question he demands of himself when an idea dawns: "Is it feasible?"

He loves the research, travels all over the world and adores talking to experts, getting the technical, professional low-down on his postulated scenarios. Then there's the writing — "the boring stuff" — which he completes fast, sticking to the formula he set himself as his research fell into place.

The Day of the Jackal, his first novel, written in 1970 when he was "skint" and begun on January 2 of that year after his New Year's hangover had cleared, took 35 days (and has since sold 9 million copies). He allowed two months for Avenger.

Freddie's not a sit-still chap, that's for sure, even though he's now 65 and considers he's settled down. "The only action-man things I do are deep-sea fishing and scuba diving — I just go down to 60ft [18m] and moon around a reef, looking at some fish. Not any really strenuous stuff."

Forsyth and his wife farm 70ha ("a large garden by your standards," he jokes) in green, undulating Hertfordshire: 150 ewes, horses, and a new line, alpacas, "to help the farm pay its way in the world".

But the past, well, that was a different country. Like Margaret Thatcher, he's the son of a shopkeeper, but, unusually, did his university in Spain. At just 19, Freddie became one of the youngest Royal Air Force pilots ever when he volunteered in 1957 for national service, at a time when many young men were feigning flat feet and bad

eyesight — anything to get out of it. "But," says Forsyth, "I wanted to fly."

He did that for two years, and then decided journalism offered the most scope for travel and adventure. After three years as a provincial reporter he joined Reuters and spent four years in Europe, posted to East Germany, "the harshest of the communist regimes, Bulgaria excepted".

He could, as it happened, speak German like a native, but didn't tell the authorities. "I spoke to the authorities in a very strangulated, silly billy Bertie Wooster-type English accent so they thought, safe as houses, because he can't move a yard without us spotting him. But when I wanted to I'd just change into East German clothes and into an East German car and disappear — prowl East Germany and get all sorts of stories about student riots, strikes and the underground opposition movement and so on, and file those stories."

Sometimes, he'd be caught as he sent the stories via landline (this was the early 1960s). The police would come through the door — just like in a novel — and drag him off to the police station for interrogation. He'd just taunt them. "Hey, what are you going to do? Are you going to put me on a show trial? Do you really want the Soviets to know I slipped your net and went awol?

"It was an adrenalin pump, but I was 25 in East Germany, and what do 25-year-olds do? They do bungy jumping, sky diving. This was sort of sky-diving with the commies."

It was, he says, taking on the system — "in this case, a particularly evil system" — and winning. It's something he still enjoys doing — witness, his broadcasts and writing in the British media, where ever since Blair's New Labour government came to power, Forsyth has been a most vociferous opponent. He claimed back in 2002, that his fortnightly five-minute spot on the BBC's Today programme was ended due to "animus" high up "in the echelons".

"I'm not very right-wing. I just hold the traditional views of a Brit who was born and raised in the 50s and 60s."

Talking to Forsyth does confirm impressions that this is a maverick — probably at times an infuriatingly opinionated blow-hard, quite convinced of his own role in turning public opinion against Blair.

"A lot of people now agree with me," he says, "who

didn't agree with me five years ago. There is a lot of disillusionment and disenchantment with the Blair government."

However unfashionable he may be in his views and attitudes, there's something very appealing about Forsyth. He's hugely entertaining, for one thing, and unpretentious.

The potentially annoying puff evident in his opinions deflates in relation to his curiosity about the world, and his self-deprecation. He describes his kind of writing as "paint by numbers" and laughs, cynics might say, all the way to the bank. Maybe so, but there's a level of enjoyment for enjoyment's sake that makes even a non-reader of his work (up until now, that is) think, well, why not? He's happy with where it all sits, so why shouldn't we be?

* You can have lunch with Frederick Forsyth at the New Zealand Herald/Dymocks literary lunch on Tuesday September 7, noon, at the Sheraton. Tickets $50; book through Ticketek.