Book Worm

JUST how involved was Frederick Forsyth in an attempted coup in Equitorial Guinea? According to How to Stage a Military Coup, by David Hebditch and Ken Connor (Greenhill Books, 18.99), the thriller writer instigated a coup in the oil-rich West African state in 1972, raising $200,000 and recruiting mercenaries from contacts he had made in Biafra. (The coup was then aborted when the ammunition failed to turn up.)

Forsyth denied this claim when it was first made in the Sunday Times in 1978, saying that all he was doing was research for his 1974 book (and later film) The Dogs of War. When Greenhill Books rang him to check their facts, he suggested one or two changes but - intriguingly - neither confirmed or denied the story.

NO WAY

SOMEWHAT cheekily, in view of his legal troubles earlier this year, the publishers wrote to ask Mark Thatcher to write the introduction to How to Stage a Military Coup. Lord Tim Bell wrote back pointing out that, despite all the media coverage, (Sir) Mark "maintains he has had no involvement in any coup". That 265,000 fine and four-month suspended sentence he received in January for breaking South African anti-mercenary laws clearly wasn't anything to do with it either.

NO LIMIT

HOW old must you be before publishers can boast about producing a "definitive" biography? In the case of Daniel Radcliffe, Simon & Schuster's just-published biography of the Harry Potter star, the answer is perfectly easy: sweet 16.