True confession time: when I first read Mario Puzo’s master thriller, The Godfather, I was a teenager who’d never watched the movie because I found it boring. 

The Day of the Jackal, Forsyth’s first novel, was published back in 1971, before many of his current readers were even born.

In honor of the 60th anniversary of the Thunderball film, we bring you the ‘story behind the story’, which has some twists and turns worthy of a thriller story itself.