Hello and welcome to The Spectator's Book Club podcast.

I'm Sam Leith, the literary editor of The Spectator.

And this week, it's my very great pleasure to introduce Frederick Forsyth.

We're celebrating not a new book, but The Day of the Jackal, his first novel, which is 50 years old this month.

Freddie, welcome.

Thank you very.

Be kind.

To start with, I mean, the Day of the Jackal is now an absolute kind of monument in the landscape of thrillers of the last century.

But obviously, you know, when you were writing it,

it wasn't yet. Can you still give me a sense of the world in which you were writing it and where

you were and how it came about? Well, it was, I mean, looking back over 50 years, I was still

bewildered now as I was then. It is unusual.

Most things clarify with a passage of time,

but this one hasn't because to this day,

it is an oddity that it ever succeeded.

I think it was grossly unfair that it succeeded the way it did,

not to me, but to all not not to make all the other strivers,

because normally the book's going to go that big, that quickly,

that it did after launch, is a result of years of struggle,

of practice of drafts and rejects and a draw full of rejection slips

and several attempts in a novel and, oh gosh, you know, years of

study and role models and trying to imitate someone else.

...