In honour of the author Frederick Forsyth, who died early this week, please enjoy this episode of the Book Club podcast, from the archives, in which he joined Sam Leith in 2021 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of his classic thriller The Day of the Jackal.

On the podcast Frederick tells Sam about banging it out in a few weeks on a typewriter with a bullet hole in it, the shady characters who informer his research, and how he never realised that – for much of its readers – the Jackal would be the hero…