#edwardfox

[neenah61]

January 15/365 A day where I should have been more productive. Now watching #thedayofthejackal #edwardfox https://www.instagram.com/p/Cnb_eM_LUAK/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[sirrobertstephensappreciati-blog]

Regent’s Park. 1976. Sir Robert is #Othello and #EdwardFox is #Iago in Othello by #williamshakespeare. #RobertStephens #SirRobertStephens #Shakespeare #theatre #actors #literature #drama https://www.instagram.com/p/BzFbizcHM95/?igshid=1wgan4prhcv40

[off-mag]

#bornToday 🎂 #13april part_2 💛 #JonathanBrandis R.I.P. ❌ #WilliamSadler 68 💜 #JordanNichols 26 💔 #CarlesPujol 40 💚 #ArianeRinehart 24 💙 #PaulSorvino 79 🍏 #EdwardFox 81 💎 #TonyDow 72 💋 #PeterDavison 67 🌝 #DonAdams R.I.P. _____________   #OFFmagbdays2018  #Birthdays _____________ SEE MORE_ http://offmag.blogspot.com.es - 👀👂

[wrestlingwithwords]

Fictional Favourites.

I recently listened to an old podcast on my commute to work featuring the legendary thriller writer Frederick Forsyth and his novel The Day of the Jackal. For any unfamiliar with this excellent book, it revolves around the plot of a real French dissident group, the OAS, hiring a fictional and unknown assassin to kill the very real French president General Charles de Gaulle.

The book is utterly compelling and periodically through my life I revisit and re read it, each time finding something new and like much fiction it has elements of truth in it. There were many attempts on the life of de Gaulle. I was quite surprised listening to Mr Forsyth, that he’d always intended that the hero of the story to be the struggling French policeman, Lebel, whilst I, like many of the readership Forsythe had discovered, always rooted for the anonymous, cold and ruthless English assassin. Maybe it’s an inbuilt English character flaw to side with your compatriot against our French neighbours, possibly even the result of my father’s tirades against de Gaulle and his blocking of Great Britain from entering the Common Market or perhaps, more plausibly, it’s simply because the Jackal is one of the most well written characters in fiction that I find myself siding with and liking a man, who we should be repelled by: a killer for hire, a paid murderer. A no ways small influence may have been the excellent Fred Zinnemann film adaptation of the book made in 1973 featuring a never cooler Edward Fox in the titular role. Fox makes the Jackal an appealing character, he can be charm personified one moment and as cold as ice the next and his period costuming makes him perhaps the most stylishly dressed assassin ever. Perhaps it’s because I saw the film first and then read the book that I like the character, but I don’t believe so. The screen Jackal never leaps into my mind from the pages of the book, I don’t see the fantastic Mr Fox when I read, much the same as I don’t see any of Messrs Connery, Moore, Dalton, etc when I read the Bond novels. Whichever form of the story you choose to go for, and I hope it’s both, I think you’ll find yourself on the side of the Jackal.