LEGENDARY thriller writer, journalist, spy and veteran Daily Express columnist Freddie Forsyth died at the age of 86 today after a short illness.

The author of The Day of The Jackal and The Odessa File, who wrote more than 25 books, passed away at home in Buckinghamshire surrounded by his family. His long and storied life was every bit as thrilling as the novels that made his name and delighted millions of readers around the world.

His meticulous eye for detail, and ability to put readers at the heart of the action, explains why he sold more than 70 million books in more than 30 languages, and had at least 12 of his stories adapted for film or television. Most iconic was The Day of the Jackal starring Edward Fox as the eponymous assassin hired to kill French president Charles de Gaulle. It was remade last year as a blockbuster TV series starring Eddie Redmayne as the hired killer.

Forsyth, universally known as 'Freddie', was credited by many people with inventing the modern thriller though he remained modest about his achievements.

Before retiring on his 85th birthday in August 2023, he wrote a must-read weekly column for the Daily Express for nearly two decades. His agent Jonathan Lloyd said: "We mourn the passing of one of the world's greatest thriller writers. Only a few weeks ago I sat with him as we watched a new and moving documentary of his life - In My Own Words, to be released later this year on BBC1 - and was reminded of an extraordinary life, well lived."

Express Editor-in-Chief Tom Hunt said: "Freddie delighted and informed Express readers for two decades with his brilliantly insightful weekly column. He was a unique voice in journalism, having experienced so much of what he wrote about first-hand and will be hugely missed. I know readers will join me in sending the deepest condolences to his family and friends."

Born in Kent, the son of a furrier, Forsyth completed his National Service with the RAF, becoming one of their youngest ever pilots - gaining his wings 44 days before his 19th birthday - and eventually flying de Havilland Vampire jets.

He later recalled: "As a boy I had two burning passions - to fly for the RAF and travel all over the world. National Service achieved the first and time as a foreign correspondent and later a novelist accomplished the second." Having turned to journalism, he became a foreign correspondent by virtue of travelling to Fleet Street and approaching newspapers.

He was sent first to Paris, reporting on the Algeria crisis and attempted assassinations of President Charles de Gaulle by the terrorist OAS group which would later give him the idea for The Day Of The Jackal. Later, he was sent to East Berlin to cover East Germany, Hungary and Czechoslovakia Arrested, bugged and followed by the Stasi, before being sent by the BBC to Africa in 1967 to cover the civil war between Nigeria and its eastern province of Biafra.

Forsyth was horrified to discover the conflict was not the small affair portrayed by the Foreign Office and the Labour government of the time, which was supplying arms to Nigeria and denying it. He was even more disgusted when, after six months, he asked to continue covering the war and was told by the BBC: "It is not our policy to cover this war."

So he quit, flew back out to Africa and stayed for most of the next two years as a freelancer. The experiences would inform his third novel, The Dogs of War, but it was The Jackal that made his name. Having returned to London in 1969, he admitted: "1970 dawned and I had no job, no prospect of a job. I'd been well smeared by the Foreign Office. I had no life savings, no apartment, I was sleeping on the sofa in a friend's place."

Left on his own when they went off to work, he said he hit on the "stupid" idea of trying to write a novel and he remembered the idea he had had in Paris. He wrote 12 pages a day for 35 days on his second-hand Empire Aristocrat typewriter. "I just hawked it from publisher to publisher and got rebuffed by the first four. Then my lucky break."

The Day Of The Jackal, published in 1971, became an international bestseller and gained Forsyth the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel and a further two-book publishing deal, as well as £20,000, then a huge sum, for the film rights.

Forsyth's publisher Bill Scott-Kerr said: "With its never-before-read ice-cool writing, iconic jacket and a protagonist for the ages, The Day of the Jackal was an instant bestseller across the world and immediately propelled Freddie into a globally successful career which would span the next 50 years across books, films and most recently television."

His last novels were The Kill List, in 2013, and The Fox in 2018. In August, Transworld will publish Revenge of Odessa, Freddie's collaborative sequel to his 1974 classic, The Odessa File, on which he worked with bestselling thriller writer Tony Kent.

Kent said: "He was a brilliant raconteur, an enthusiastic patron of a number of charities and - most importantly from my point of view - the absolute master of the thriller genre. Working with Freddie on Revenge of Odessa this past year has been the unparalleled privilege of my writing life. To exchange and discuss ideas and plots and action beats and suspense and...all of it, with the one man who ever did it to perfection. You cannot buy that kind of learning."

Having first filed for the Daily Express in the 1960s, he began his blockbuster weekly column for the paper more than two decades ago. Although Forsyth always denied he was a spy, his 2015 autobiography The Outsider admitted he had been an intelligence "asset" for more than 20 years.

After publishing the memoir, he announced that he would be giving up writing thrillers because his second wife Sandy had told him in no uncertain terms that he was getting too old to travel to dangerous places. Fortunately, he continued with his weekly column in the Daily Express, before retiring on his 85th birthday.

Sandy died in October aged 76.

Jennifer Selway, who edited his column for years, said: "Freddie's weekly column in the Daily Express was essential reading for almost a quarter of a century and I am proud of the fact that I was instrumental in signing him up. In the early days his copy arrived type-written, with 'love Freddie' added in his familiar scrawl. He never went for the obvious subjects and would often let a news story marinate for a couple of weeks before he turned his attention to it. It was always worth the wait.

"We had jolly lunches in posh places often involving vodka shots and caviar. Once we got lost walking to The Ivy. 'You're an international spy, Freddie,' I teased him. 'How can you get lost in Covent Garden?' He answered with that familiar chuckle. He was very kind too. When he heard that my teenage daughter had bought a portable typewriter he sent her some ribbons because he knew from experience that they were hard to get hold of.

"Sandy, his wife, known as the CO in his columns, died a few months ago. They were devoted to each other and this must have been a terrible blow for him."

He is survived by two sons from his first marriage, to former model Carole Cunningham between 1973 and 1988, with whom he had two sons Stuart and Shane.