Trivia / Jack Higgins

• Money, Dear Boy: He moved to Jersey in the mid-1970s following the success of The Eagle Has Landed because, with the highest rate of income tax in Britain being 83% ^note  today, it's 45% , he was advised that he had to become a tax exile if he wanted to hang onto any of the money he made from writing.
  "I didn't really want to go. If the tax rates had been as they are now – or even at 50p in the pound – I'd have stayed in England. I had a good life there and I was happy; but I'd never had any real money and I wanted the security."
• Sequel Gap: 15 years passed between the publication of The Eagle Has Landed (1975) and the publication of its sequel, The Eagle Has Flown (1990).
• Write What You Know: A few examples:
  • His Northern Irish background — his mother was from Belfast and he lived there for much of his childhood — informs on the many references to The Troubles. That said, he was raised as a Protestant and his two best-known characters, Liam Devlin and Sean Dillon, are Catholics.
    "We were very poor and there was great tension between the Catholics and the Protestants. As a Protestant, I'd get beaten up by Catholics ... Strangely, though, these experiences made me less rather more than sectarian. I came to see both religions as morally compromised and oppressed, and have written that ambiguity into two of my main characters. Many Catholics even assume I must be Catholic from the way I write."
  • Night of the Fox is set on Jersey, where he's lived for many years.