Lunches, kidnappings and coups: my Frederick Forsyth connection
Guinea-Bissau's new drug lords would go on to inspire a novel of their own. Back home on the Telegraph foreign desk in London a few months later, I got a call from no less a figure than Frederick Forsyth. His next novel, he told me, was going to be about the cocaine trade, set in coup-ridden west Africa: Narcos meets The Dogs of War. Could I fax him my article (he was a famous technophobe) and pass on a few contacts? Oh, and any recommendations for a hotel? Despite already pushing 70, he was still the roving correspondent that he started out as, keen to see things for himself.
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