Special Guest Blogger: Frederick Forsyth

People, bless their optimistic cotton socks, often asked about the "creative process." but i didnt write about feelings and fairies, I wrote about how a man, with sufficient ingenuity and a well-placed contact, might blow something up, or, more likely, prevent it from being blown up. My books weren’t born of artistic angst, they were born of a meticulous adherence to plausible reality and the pressing need to meet a deadline. One has bills to pay, after all.
Take The Day of the Jackal. Everyone goes on about it. The detail, the suspense! Frankly, I was just trying to write a believable story about a professional killer. I spent weeks researching French police methods, weapons, passports. Not because I’m some kind of literary martyr, but because I didn’t want some retired Gendarme writing me an angry letter pointing out the flaws in my fictional police cordon.
As for my life, it’s been a bit of a kaleidoscope. Pilot, journalist, spy  and then, rather unexpectedly, a best-selling novelist.
My younger self, clattering away on an old typewriter, probably wouldn’t have believed I’d still be writing decades later but then to be fair, my younger self was mostly concerned with finding a decent pint and not getting shot in some godforsaken corner of the world. Simpler times.
I did have some controversial views, like that time I vociferously supported Brexit The EU, bless their bureaucratic cotton socks, just didn't understand that some chaps prefer their tea, brewed exactly how they like it, without a thousand directives on the exact temperature of the water or the acceptable angle of the teabag. Common sense, you see. A rare commodity, it seems.
And then there's this climate change brouhaha. All this talk of the planet boiling, the ice caps melting, the end of days just around the corner, delivered with the grave pronouncements of a particularly gloomy vicar.
Now, I’m not saying it’s not getting a bit warmer, but the sky isn't falling, and frankly, I suspect the planet has seen a good deal worse than a few extra degrees. It's a rather resilient old thing, Earth. She's been through ice ages and volcanoes, and I suspect she'll manage perfectly well without us all running around in a panic, banning perfectly good cars and eating laboratory-grown steak.  
So, will histoerians mention the geopolitical thrillers or the fact that I thought leaving the EU was a perfectly sensible decision and that all this climate hysteria is a bit overblown? Probably both, knowing my luck.
Ultimately, I suppose, I hope they remember the stories. The ones where the good chaps, usually British, occasionally French, used their wits and courage to prevent some monstrous injustice. The ones where research was king, and a well-placed fact could be more devastating than a missile. The ones that, for a few hours at least, took people away from their own particular drizzles and worries, and plunged them into a world of genuine peril and cunning.
As for the rest of it, my opinions on the price of milk, the state of modern manners, or indeed, the baffling complexities of the European fishing policy well, those are just the ramblings of an old chap who’s seen a bit too much of the world to take much of it seriously anymore.