Frederick Forsyth, who died in June, deserved a better TV adaptation of his novel The Day of the Jackal to send him off. Eddie Redmayne works well enough in the lead role of an assassin, what with that cruel mouth of his. But the character in the original book is a loner. Here he is a simpering husband. You are asked to believe that someone who walks on eggshells around his in-laws will go out and drive a bullet into a stranger’s forehead for cash.
Forsyth was a francophone and a Germanophile. He reported on the Nigerian civil war (too one-sidedly for some tastes) and was still sticking an oar into politics there in his eighties. A friend of mine who invited him to a literary festival in the subcontinent remembers his savviness about the region. That he was also a Brexit-supporting Tory should surprise me. I can’t say it does.