With a new TV adaptation of his most well-known novel in production, the author talks about cancel culture, MI6 and that speeding fine
“Touch wood,” says Frederick Forsyth, leaning forward to place his fingers on his garden table, “no one has yet called me out, saying my books are un-woke.” His rich baritone voice pronounces this last word slowly and with scorn. His mouth even puckers. “Woke is stupid rather than sinful, but plain stupid.”
What has prompted the outburst is news that the first and most enduring of his 16 thrillers, 1971’s The Day of the Jackal, about a hired assassin who targets the French president Charles de Gaulle, is about to be remade as a television series by Sky, starring Eddie Redmayne in the lead role. It will be the third adaptation to reach the screen, following one fronted by Edward Fox in 1973, and another that Forsyth disowns, with Bruce Willis in 1997.
This time around he is wondering aloud whether details in his original will have to be changed to suit the tastes of the cancel culture. “I’d be horrified if they tried to make The Day of the Jackal woke,” he confides. “There’s not much sex in my books. I don’t deal with homosexuality, one fellow making a pass at another fellow. So I can’t see where wokeness would come in there.”
It is worrying him nonetheless. “What JK Rowling said about who women were and weren’t seemed to me obviously true, yet we are not allowed to say that any more. Say this, don’t do that, you’re not allowed to say the other. She has been given a terrible time.”