Jack Higgins

Desert Island Discs: Archive 2005-2010

BBC

Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.4 • 804 Ratings

🗓️ 5 March 2006

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the thriller writer Harry Patterson - otherwise known as Jack Higgins. Harry Patterson grew up in the midst of the violence and disarray of 1940s Belfast and the turmoil he witnessed there has been an enduring influence on his work. He always knew he wanted to become a writer, but he wasn't a promising pupil at school and left without qualifications. He took himself off to evening classes, gained a degree and trained as a teacher - but he spent every spare evening dreaming up plots for thrillers, always hoping that they might earn him 'an extra bob or two'.

A chance encounter with one of his old teachers made him change his style and develop his characters more fully. He took on the pseudonym Jack Higgins and, in his mid-forties, wrote the book that made him a household name: The Eagle Has Landed. He's written more than sixty novels and sold hundreds of millions of books worldwide. He is one of the few British writers to be as successful in America as here and, at the age of 76, is still creating new plots and new characters.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: Let's Face the Music and Dance by Fred Astaire Book: Complete works by Charles Dickens Luxury: Mobile phone

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're about to listen to a BBC podcast, but this is about something else you might enjoy.
0:05.4	My name's Katie Lecky and I'm an assistant commissioner for on demand music on BBC Sounds.
0:10.7	The BBC has an incredible musical heritage and culture and as a music lover, I love being part of that.
0:17.4	With music on sounds, we offer collections and mixes for everything, from workouts to
0:22.4	helping you nod off, boogie in your kitchen, or even just a moment of calm. And they're
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0:34.1	life, check out BBC Sounds. Hello, I'm Kristaie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive.
0:41.8	For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.
0:44.9	The program was originally broadcast in 2006, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.
0:50.2	Music My castaway this week is a writer.
1:08.6	His thrillers are worldwide bestsellers. The product of someone
1:12.3	who, by his own admission, was, quote, a clever bugger who didn't fit into the system. As a child,
1:18.3	he read everything but never did well at school. But eventually he became a teacher. And he started
1:23.4	to write by night, a steady stream of adventure stories that allowed him to pay off the mortgage and ultimately write full time.
1:31.3	Then suddenly when he was 45, it all took off.
1:34.3	He wrote The Eagle has landed and moved from successful everyday author to the world's number one.
1:41.3	It was his 27th book and many more have followed since,
1:45.3	because this multimillionaire storyteller is still writing and at the age of 76 has no intention
1:51.3	of stopping. I'm one of only a handful of British authors who's been just as successful
1:56.0	in America as Britain, he says. They can't take that away from me. He is Harry Patterson, otherwise known as Jack Higgins.
2:04.7	Jack, it's a phenomenal record, really. I take it that anyone, if anyone had told Harry Patterson when he was a young man in the 50s in Leeds that he was going to have this kind of success, he'd have laughed, would he?
2:16.8	Absolutely. In fact, I know that sounds very mundane to have this kind of success, he'd have laughed, would he? Absolutely.
	...

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