It was while I was staying with them that I was introduced to Hanna Reitsch, Hitler’s favourite aviatrix.
Tonbridge School was not much fun; this is the farewell assembly in Big School in 1952. I hung on until December 1955. At least I had the satisfaction of saying goodbye from the cockpit of a Tiger Moth.
The RAF at seventeen. Heady stuff: flying Vampires in formation. I am number 15.
Eleven of us made it to the end. I am second from the right in the back row.
Here I am getting my wings. I had never been more proud. I was a pilot in the RAF.
To King’s Lynn, to work on the Eastern Daily Press. I lived in a flat above a pet shop at the far end of the ironically named Paradise Chambers.
My mentor, chief reporter Frank Keeler, taught me the importance of checking facts before you write.
Then to Reuters in London where Doon Campbell was news editor and the inspiration for generations of foreign correspondents.
A lucky break sent me off to Paris just in time for the assassination attempt on President Charles de Gaulle in August 1962. He is in the back of the car with his wife, Yvonne, in a reconstruction of the event.
Bullets riddled the body of the Citroën (above), and newspaper men rushed to the scene as darkness fell (below).
Nobody lasted much longer than a year in Berlin. I was there from September 1963 to October 1964 and lived on the eastern side of Checkpoint Charlie.
Kurt Blecha was Press Secretary to the Politburo, a nasty piece of work.
When an American spy plane was shot down just outside Magdeburg, I was the first journalist on the scene and managed to get an eyewitness account from a local. The three airmen (see two of them here) had been captured by the Russians.
I joined the BBC in 1965, full of enthusiasm—misplaced as it turned out—and in 1967 was sent to Nigeria to cover what turned out to be one of the cruellest African civil wars. Sir David Hunt (left) was the British High Commissioner in Lagos, a snob and a racist. Colonel Yakubu Gowon (right), a Christian from the north, was the puppet head of state.
I went to Enugu and met Colonel Emeka Ojukwu, an Oxford graduate and military governor of Iboland, who had presided over the declaration of the independent state of Biafra in May 1967.
Soon posters were appearing in Enugu warning of the threat of war.
I was with Ojukwu (above) when his soldiers advanced unopposed over the bridge at Onitsha; later they were forced to retreat and blew up the bridge behind them (below).
Having terminated my unhappy relationship with the BBC, I visited Israel in the aftermath of the Six-Day War. I went to a kibbutz at Sde Boker in the Negev desert to meet David Ben-Gurion, founding father of the state of Israel, one of the greatest men I have ever met.
I was also anxious to meet Ezer Weizman, one of the first pilots in the Israeli Air Force. Here he is in 1948 with one of his Czech-produced Messerschmitts, the Avia S-199.
A chance meeting in a bar led me to the story of the man who drove the truck carrying the explosives that blew up the King David Hotel on 22 July 1946.
Back in Biafra children were starving. This photo was taken by David Cairns in June 1968, one of the first seen in English newspapers. The effect was dramatic.
By June 1968 I was back in Biafra. I travelled by boat with Walter Partington, in front, and David Cairns of the Daily Express, who took this picture. I am in the back behind Bruce Loudon, a stringer for the Daily Telegraph.
David took many photos of the escalating war, among them this one of me looking on while an elderly Ibo draws in the dirt (above), and this picture (below) of an unexploded British-made shell, supplied to the Nigerians. So much for denials from London.
In September 1968 the Nigerian Observer even went so far as to report that I had joined the Biafran army.
As more photographs appeared in the British press of the famine in Biafra, the real state of affairs was becoming apparent.
A protest rally was held at Speaker’s Corner in August 1968 calling the BBC and the Wilson government to account.
Family matters.
My parents, a constant source of support and encouragement, at their cottage in Willesborough, near Ashford.
Carrie, Stuart and me at home in Ireland in 1979 (above). Shane came along the same year (below).
They soon grew up: here we are bagging game in South Africa, and later scuba-diving in the Gulf of Oman.
Sandy and I collect my gong, awarded for charity work, October 1997.
The Day of the Jackal was written on my portable typewriter in thirty-five days in January 1970 (above), published the next year, and two years later made into a film directed by Fred Zinnemann, starring the relatively unknown Edward Fox (below).
It was the back jacket of the German edition that blew my cover when I was doing research for The Dogs of War.
Next came The Odessa File (above): I used the story of the true-life Nazi war criminal Eduard Roschmann (below); the release of the film in 1974 led to his arrest by the Argentinian police. He escaped and died in Paraguay three years later.
The French edition of The Dogs of War was used as a handbook by French mercenaries when they attacked the Comoro Islands. They succeeded in taking them over!
Michael Caine starred in the film of my 1984 novel, The Fourth Protocol. We had some convivial times together.
Research is important: in 2009 I went to Guinea-Bissau to research cocaine trafficking for The Cobra.
Back to the beginning. In a Spitfire, flying high over the Weald, just like they did in 1940.
PHOTO CREDITS
Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders, but any who have been overlooked are invited to get in touch with the publishers.
FF: author’s collection
Spitfires of the No 91 Squadron lined up at Hawkinge, Kent, 5 May 1942: courtesy Imperial War Museum/CH5429
Dewald family: FF; Hanna Reitsch with Bozo Komac at the German glider championships held at Oerlinghausen, Germany, 31 July 1953: © TopFoto.co.uk; all RAF photos: FF; Tonbridge School from the air and Big School, Tonbridge School: both courtesy Tonbridge School
Frank Keeler: © Archant Ltd; Doon Campbell in the Reuters newsroom, Fleet Street, London, 1950s: Reuters; newsmen at the scene of the attempted assassination of President Charles de Gaulle, Petit Clamart, 22 August 1962: Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images; Kurt Blecha, Press Secretary to the Politburo at a press conference in Berlin, 1 February 1962: Koblenz, Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-90187-0008/photo Heinz Junge; President de Gaulle’s bullet-riddled car, August 1962: ©1962 Rex Features; East German border guards at Checkpoint Charlie, Berlin, April 1963: Ullstein via Getty Images; reconstruction of the assassination attempt, August 1962: Patrice Habans/Paris Match via Getty Images
Lt Col. Yakubu Gowon holding a press conference, August 1966: Priya Ramrakha/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images; posters warning of the threat of war, Enugu, 9 June 1967: Associated Press; bridge at Onitsha, June 1969: ©RIA Novosti/TopFoto; FF and Col. Emeka Ojukwu: David Cairns, London Daily Express; Col. Ojukwu giving a press conference during the war: AFP/Getty Images
David Ben-Gurion at Sde Boker, October 1965: © David Rubinger/Corbis; Ezer Weizman: UA/Israel Sun/REX Shutterstock; King David Hotel, 22 July 1946: Fox Photos/Getty Images
Children, Biafra, June 1968: David Cairns, London Daily Express
Trip to Biafra with army escort, 1968; FF and Biafran, 1968; Biafran mother and baby, 1968; malnourished Biafran baby, 1968: all David Cairns, London Daily Express; protest rally, Speaker’s Corner, Hyde Park, London, 1968: Evening Standard/Getty Images; shell, Biafra, 1968: David Cairns, London Daily Express
FF and his parents; FF and sons hunting and scuba-diving: all FF; FF and his wife, Sandy, at Buckingham Palace, London, 4 April 1997: Fiona Hanson/Press Association; FF, Carrie Forsyth and their first son, Stuart, 14
June 1979: Philip Jackson/Associated Newspapers/Rex; FF, Carrie and their second son, Shane, 1979: Mike Forster/Associated Newspapers/Rex
FF at his typewriter, c. 1970: Hulton Archive/Getty Images; FF and Michael Caine, 14 February 1986: Mirrorpix; FF in Guinea-Bissau, 4 March 2009: Associated Press; FF at a book signing, London, 25 September 1972: Wesley/Keystone/Getty Images; Edward Fox and Fred Zinnemann on the set of The Day of the Jackal, 1973: Snap/Rex
FF flying, August 2014: all FF
*From “The Party’s Over,” lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, music by Julie Styne.
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