Actor

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Jan Oskar Sverre Lucien Henri Guillou (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈjɑːn ɡɪˈjuː], French: [ɡiju]; born 17 January 1944) is a French-Swedish author, journalist and convicted spy. Guillou has been accused by some commentators of being an agent of the KGB. Guillou's fame in Sweden was established during his time as an investigative journalist, most notably in 1973 when he and co-reporter Peter Bratt exposed a secret, immoral and illegal intelligence organization in Sweden, Informationsbyrån (IB). He is still active within journalism as a column writer for the Swedish evening tabloid Aftonbladet. Among his books are a series of spy fiction novels about a spy named Carl Hamilton, and a trilogy of historical fiction novels about a Knight Templar, Arn Magnusson. He is the owner of one of the largest publishing companies in Sweden, Piratförlaget (Pirate Publishing), together with his wife, publisher Ann-Marie Skarp, and Liza Marklund.

Life and career

Guillou was born in Södertälje, Stockholm County, Sweden. His Breton-Swedish father, Charles Guillou (1922–2020), came to Sweden in 1941 as the son of a member of the French Resistance and head of the offices of Free France in Stockholm, and later became a journalist for the French nationwide daily newspaper L'Équipe. His mother, Marianne (née Botolfsen; 1922–2013), was of Norwegian descent. Guillou acquired French citizenship at birth and became a Swedish citizen in 1975. When Guillou's paternal grandfather was offered a position at the French embassy in Helsinki, Finland, his father decided to move with him and settled there. Guillou grew up with his mother and her new husband in Saltsjöbaden and Näsbypark outside of Stockholm.

Education

Guillou studied at Vasa Real in Stockholm but was expelled from the school because of his bad behaviour, including physical abuse, theft and blackmail. He then went on to study for two years at the Solbacka boarding school in Södermanland. Guillou has described his upbringing, with the continuous physical abuse from his sadistic stepfather and the harsh treatment at the Solbacka school, in the semi-autobiographical novel Ondskan (1981). According to the Swedish tabloid newspaper Expressen, his mother, his sister, his teachers and his friends from the Solbacka school have contested his account and called the book a hoax.

He finished his studentexamen (upper-secondary final examination) from the boarding school Viggbyholmsskolan, located in Viggbyholm, in 1964. Guillou then attended Stockholm University from 1964 to 1966.

Family

Guillou first lived together with author and translator Marina Stagh, with whom he has two children, Dan (born 1970) and Ann-Linn (born 1972) Guillou. His daughter Ann-Linn, a journalist and feminist commentator, lives in a civil union with Sandra Andersson, daughter of film director Roy Andersson.

He is now married to publisher Ann-Marie Skarp (born 1952), the daughter of colonel Åke Skarp and Märta (née Kugelberg). He has an apartment in the Östermalm district of Stockholm, where he has lived for most of his adult life. He also has a country residence in Flybo, Östhammar Municipality, northern Roslagen, where he lives when he writes his books.

Employment

Guillou started his career as a journalist writing for the magazine FIB aktuellt from 1966 to 1967. He later co-founded the Folket i Bild/Kulturfront magazine, at which he worked from 1972 until 1977. He currently writes a column for Aftonbladet and also comments occasionally in other news outlets on current events usually taking the left-wing and the Anti-American side, particularly the conflicts in the Middle East and miscellaneous domestic issues, including the United States' war on terrorism, Israeli policy towards the Palestinians, the Swedish Security Service, Swedish courtroom procedures and public inquiries.

Guillou has served as the host of several television programmes: Magazinet (1981–1984), Rekordmagazinet (last years together with Göran Skytte) and Grabbarna på Fagerhult (together with Pär Lorentzon and Leif G. W. Persson), all shown on Sveriges Television.

He co-authored the crime/drama television series Talismanen (TV4, 2003). In the series, Guillou and co-author Henning Mankell both play the roles of themselves. Guillou also authored and narrated the history documentary series Arns rike (TV4, 2004) and Häxornas tid (TV4, 2005).

He was awarded the Lenin Award (Sweden) in 2014, and at the prize ceremony Cecilia Cervin said this about him: "You have remained "cheeky", or refractory as Jan Myrdal usually calls it, i.e., disobedient, defiant, resilient, through a long writing life. You have achieved a lot with it and that is why we pay tribute to you today."

The IB affair

In 1973, Folket i Bild/Kulturfront, a left-wing magazine, published a series of articles written by Guillou and Peter Bratt, revealing a Swedish secret intelligence agency called Informationsbyrån ("The Information Bureau" or IB for short). The articles, based on information initially furnished by former IB employee Håkan Isacson, described the IB as a secret organization that gathered information on Swedish communists and others deemed to be "security risks". The organization operated outside of the framework of the defense and ordinary intelligence, and was invisible in terms of state budget allocations. The articles in Folket i Bild/Kulturfront accused the IB staff of being engaged in alleged murder, break-ins, wiretapping against foreign embassies in Sweden and spying abroad.

The exposure of the IB in the magazine, which included headshots with names and social security numbers of some of the alleged staff published under the headline "Spies", led to a major domestic political scandal known as the "IB affair" (IB-affären). The activities ascribed to this secret outfit and its alleged ties to the Swedish Social Democratic Party were denied by Prime Minister Olof Palme, Defense Minister Sven Andersson and the Supreme Commander of the Swedish Armed Forces, General Stig Synnergren. However, later investigations by various journalists and by a public commissions, as well as autobiographies by the persons involved, have confirmed some of the activities described by Bratt and Guillou. In 2002, the public commission published a 3,000-page report where research about the IB affair was included.

Guillou, Peter Bratt and Håkan Isacson were all arrested, tried in camera (behind closed doors) and convicted of espionage. According to Bratt, the verdict required some stretching of established judicial practice on the part of the court since none of them were accused of having acted in collusion with a foreign power. After one appeal Guillou's sentence was reduced from one year to 10 months. Guillou and Bratt served part of their sentence in solitary cells. Guillou was kept first at Långholmen Prison in central Stockholm and later at Österåker Prison north of the capital.

The CIA affair

In 1976, two employees of Sveriges Radio contacted Guillou at Folket i Bild/Kulturfront with a story of a colleague that had been recruited by a CIA officer in Stockholm. They had earlier been turned down by a major newspaper, and now asked the journalist that had exposed IB if he could publish the story. The three worked out a scenario where the CIA recruiter could be legally accused of espionage, and instructed the recruit to collect evidence thereof. Unbelievably enough, the CIA officer agreed to give his spy written instructions of what information to retrieve, so the informal counter-intelligence group had only to stockpile these, take photographs of the two spies meeting, and discuss how much they needed before the final exposure would be made.

The recruited spy was at a later meeting instructed to go to Angola with orders to get information about both military and political conditions. The legally experienced within the group advised their double agent not to agree, but he went anyway. Afterwards, the group assembled to write…