The Eagle Has Landed author, Henry Patterson, died at 92 years

The best-selling author of The Eagle Has Landed, Henry Patterson, has died at the age of 92, according to his publisher.

Between 1959 and 2017, Patterson, who began writing as a teacher, published 85 novels. Patterson died at his Jersey home, surrounded by family, according to HarperCollins. The Eagle Has Landed, a novel written under the pseudonym Jack Higgins about a Nazi plot to kidnap Sir Winston Churchill during World War II, sold more than 50 million copies and was adapted into a film. Robert Duvall, Donald Sutherland, and Sir Michael Caine starred in the 1976 adaptation.

Patterson’s other works include Comes the Dark Stranger, Hell is Too Crowded, and To Catch a King, and he has sold over 250 million books in his career. Patterson grew up in Belfast before moving to Leeds. He was born in Newcastle upon Tyne and grew up in Newcastle upon Tyne. After becoming a teacher, he wrote novels in his spare time and received a £75 advance for his first novel, Sad Wind from the Sea, in 1959.

His final book, The Midnight Bell, was a Sunday Times bestseller when it was released in 2017. HarperCollins stated that by the time his last novel was published, he was simply referred to as “the legend.”

Patterson’s novels “were and remain absolutely unputdownable,” according to HarperCollins CEO Charlie Redmayne, who described him as a “classic thriller writer: instinctive, tough, relentless.”

“I had the privilege of being at Collins Publishers when we received the manuscript of The Eagle has Landed,” Patterson’s literary agent Jonathan Lloyd said.

“With rare certainty, we all knew we’d be publishing an instant classic.”

Patterson is survived by his wife, Denise, and four children from his first marriage: Sarah, Ruth, Sean, and Hannah.

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