Brian Freemantle

Brian Harry Freemantle (10 June 1936 – 23 December 2024) was an English thriller and non-fiction writer, known for his 1977 spy novel Charlie Muffin.

Freemantle was born in Southampton. He also published using the pseudonyms John Maxwell, Jonathan Evans, Jack Winchester and Richard Gant. He was a Freeman of the City of London.

Until 1975, when he became a full-time writer, he was a foreign correspondent and editor for various newspapers, including the Daily Mail and the Daily Sketch. In April that year, he organised the sole British-led airlift rescue of South Vietnamese civilians during the Fall of Saigon, assisting in the evacuation of 100 orphans, of whom Viktoria Cowley was one, aged approximately 18 months.

In 1989, Brian appeared in the television documentary Borders, alongside Michio Kaku, Steve Buscemi, Margaret Randall, and Robert Anton Wilson. In his interview, he discusses transnational crime, border security, narcotics smuggling, and his experiences being banned from the former Czechoslovakia and Soviet Union.

Brian and Viktoria, now a grown adult, have been featured in a few documentaries together, the first being BBC One – The Airmail Orphan. He later made a promotional film for his own books, Open Road Media, in which Viktoria appeared. In another documentary from BBC One Northern Ireland, Viktoria introduces another Vietnamese adoptee from the flight to Brian. On 28 March 2018, they both appeared on BBC's The One Show talking about the airlift, adoption and Vietnam.

Viktoria's son is named Harry, Brian's middle name, in recognition of Operation Babylift on 6 April 1975. Viktoria and Brian were in regular contact after they first met in 2010; she is the first Vietnamese adoptee Brian has met and the only adoptee he remained in contact with. She told him, "You saved my life and those of every other child. On their behalf, and my own, I thank you."

Freemantle died from Parkinson's disease on 23 December 2024, at the age of 88.