The Day of the Jackal
Frederick Forsyth is the author of 16 novels and short story collections. At the age of nineteen he became the youngest pilot in the Royal Air Force, but ultimately decided to pursue a career in journalism. In 1967 he was sent to report on the Nigerian Civil War for the BBC. He eventually covered the conflict as a freelancer, publishing his controversial account, The Biafra Story, in 1969. His first novel followed in 1971, The Day of the Jackal, for which he drew on his experience as a Reuters reporter in France. The novel won the Edgar Allan Poe Award and became an international best-seller. In 1973 it was made into a major film. Frederick Forsyth was awarded a CBE in 1997, and lives in Buckinghamshire.
Ken Follett was born in Cardiff in 1949, the son of a tax inspector. He first hit the bestseller lists in 1978 with Eye of the Needle, a tense spy story set during the Second World War. In 1989, The Pillars of the Earth marked a radical change; a novel about building a cathedral in the Middle Ages, it sold more than nineteen million copies in many languages, making Follett one of the world’s best-loved novelists. His most recent project was the Century trilogy: three historical novels that tell the story of the twentieth century through the eyes of five families.