He was the young reporter in a flashy sports car who would go on to become one of the world’s greatest thriller writers.
Frederick Forsyth, famed for writing The Day of the Jackal, The Odessa File and The Dogs of War, has died at the age of 86.
His writing career began in 1958, when he became an apprentice reporter at the EDP’s King’s Lynn office.
He joined the paper after leaving the RAF, where he gained his pilot’s wings and flew de Haviland Vampire aircraft during his National Service.
Forsyth, who was born in Kent in 1938, was landing in Lynn for the second time, having been evacuated to the town as a young boy.
During the Second World War he was billeted with a man who measured up customers at Goddard’s, the tailors.
While he yearned to be a foreign correspondent, a journalist’s life at the EDP’s office on the High Street saw him turn his hand to more mundane matters, including reporting on the town’s magistrates’ court, council meetings and local fetes.
Frederick Forsyth, who has passed away at the age of 86 (Image: PA) During an office clear-out in the early 1980s, the initials FF were found inscribed in the news diary against the day’s potential stories, including police calls and Hunstanton Town Council.
He was taken under the wing of the legendary chief reporter Frank Keeler, who Forsyth would describe as “an excellent journalist” and a stickler for accuracy in his autobiography The Outsider, published in 2015.
Long after his protégé moved on to greater things, Mr Keeler kept a signed photograph of him on his desk in King’s Lynn, showing him wearing his trademark cravat and smoking a cigarette.
Forsyth attended Mr Keeler’s retirement gathering at the EDP’s offices in Prospect House, in Norwich, in 1980.
From left, Frank Keeler, Gerald Nunn, Alfred Jenner, Frederick Forsyth and Jerry Hutson pictured at Mr Keeler’s retirement party in 1980 (Image: EDP Library) “I owe him my greatest debt,” he said. “He had enormous patience and kindness.
“With him there was no such thing as almost right. Things were either right or wrong.
“If I had not had that training I would not have been able to write the books I have.”
Being at the centre of the community meant there was no room for error.
“On a daily paper in London, the readers will never see you,” he said in an interview with his former paper after his autobiography came out.
“On a local paper if you get things wrong about people, they will be coming through the front door.”
Frederick Forsyth pictured during a visit to the EDP’s office in King’s Lynn in 1972 (Image: EDP Library) Feathers flew true to form when Forsyth got the details of where one of a local pigeon fancier’s charges had come in a contest at the nearby Corn Exchange wrong, adding: “He didn’t take it lying down.”
Any injury to the pride of either party was eclipsed by more serious matters when the young reporter misjudged a bend in his MG sports car and crashed, suffering a shattered left hand and severing an ear, which had to be sewn back on by a surgeon.
Forsyth recuperated at his digs, which he would later refer to as an “appalling bedsit”, above a long-demolished shop on Paradise Parade, near what was then the cattle market.
“It had no bathroom, so I brought back into use the bathroom at the top of the EDP building in the High Street,” he later recalled.
Frederick Forsyth pictured during the 1990s (Image: PA) “I used it for three years. I used a lot of EDP gas without permission.”
Life in west Norfolk was sometimes worth scrubbing up for.
“Towards Swaffham and Hunstanton there were country clubs and parties,” said Forsyth. “It was a good, lively social life. I enjoyed it.”
But after three years working for the EDP, which also included stints at the paper’s Norwich office, Forsyth thirsted to travel further afield.
His command of French helped him snag a berth at the Reuters news agency in Paris and bid au revoir to Norfolk.
Frederick Forsyth began his writing career as a reporter in King’s Lynn (Image: Ian Burt)
Covering the aftermath of an assassination attempt on President Charles de Gaulle in 1963 gave him the inspiration for his first novel, The Day of the Jackal, published 10 years later.
The bestseller and his subsequent works were all researched with the same obsession with accuracy which was drummed into him as a cub reporter on the EDP.
His name was associated with Norfolk again in 2023, when scenes from a film based on his 1975 novel The Shepherd, starring John Travolta, were shot in Norfolk.
Frederick Forsyth, born August 25, 1938, died at the age of 86 on June 9, 2025.
