Legendary Author, Frederick Forsyth, Revisits His Action-Packed and Aviation- Fueled Life in The Outsider

By Mark RhodesFrederick Forsyth is well known as one of the most accomplished and prolific thriller writers of the 20th century whose works have sold more than 70 million copies and been adapted into films a dozen times. This is only a part of his life’s work; his resume includes stints as a BBC correspondent (where he covered the attempted assassination of Charles de Gaulle––the core plot point of his most famous thriller (The Day of the Jackal); radio broadcaster; MI6 operative; and the youngest ever RAF pilot at 17 and a half. Suffice to say they don’t make ‘em like Mr. Forsyth anymore. His recently published memoir, The Outsider: My Life in Intrigue (GP Putnam’s Sons), chronicles Mr. Forsyth’s extraordinary, swashbuckling life. His tone is rakish, self- depreciating but also aware of how his luck, drive, and talents have served him well.Mr. Forsyth reports that he was obsessed with the idea of aviation and being an aviator since flying in the seat of a Spitfire at the age of five, and indeed the incessant need to fly consumed much of Mr. Forsyth’s youth. His accounting of his early aviation training and roguish exploits in the cockpit propel the initial chapters of the narrative. His initial success was getting placement in an RAF Flying Scholarship in the mid-50s. The idea here was a novel one; give young men interested in flying the chance to earn a private pilot’s license with the idea that they might get the flying “bug” and join up later. Mr. Forsyth paints a vivid picture of the rough-and-tumble nature of this training, including an episode where he “buzzed” his old school.  Not content with procuring his private pilot’s license, Mr. Forsyth set his sights on considerably bigger ambitions, namely flying Jets in the RAF. Mr. Forsyth goes into interesting detail about the transition of the RAF to jet-powered flight during the years not long after World War II. Typically, RAF pilots were basically “weekend warriors” who reported for duty (and flew) on weekends. However, with the Cold War heating up, there was considerable concern that this kind of genteel and old school approach to military aviation could not compete with the suddenly sophisticated Soviet jet fighters. True to form, Mr. Forsyth used his prototypical guile, instinct for human nature, and outright audacity to talk himself into a position as a jet pilot in the RAF despite being younger than the required age of 18. As a novelist, Forsyth is known as a plot-oriented storyteller with little of the pulp flourish of say Ian Fleming. Interestingly enough, his descriptions of his time flying jets shows hints of poetry that is fairly uncharacteristic of his prose. When he reminisces about flying, he waxes poetic: “The thing about wings is they are yours and yours alone. You cannot inherit them from an indulgent father; you cannot buy them in Savile Row… you practice and you persevere, and finally you do it alone, high above the clouds…”The book ends on a charming and particularly satisfying note with Mr. Forsyth going up in a Spitfire in 2014 in Kent and taking the controls from the pilot for a time. In the retelling of this, Mr. Forsyth’s panache is on full display (“Would old Fred’s luck still hold? It held”). Of course this should have been little surprise for “old Fred.” His luck has held for almost 80 years.