Lee Child: "I am looking forward to going back to Whitby, the fish and chips there are wonderful," says the Jack Reacher author

Child, who celebrates his 71st birthday next week, will discuss his 30th Jack Reacher book, Exit Strategy as well as his first book of autobiographical essays, Reacher: The Stories Behind the Stories and a short story collection Safe Enough. He’ll be in conversation with the author, barrister and TV personality, Rob Rinder.

“I suppose that means there’s twice the appeal," says Child." I do always wonder whether anyone will turn up.” He needn’t worry, the event on November 8 is already sold out.

"I do find that at these festivals readers don’t necessarily want to know all abut your new book they just want to talk generally, to get some insider information about how does it feel to be a writer. I find it is much more interesting not to try to sell the book.”

Exit Strategy is the 30th Jack Reacher book, (co-authored with Childs’ brother Andrew) a character Childs created after he was made redundant from Granada Television in 1994 although he never set out to be an writer.

"I was a reader. I loved reading. When I was little growing up in Birmingham with very few prospects of getting out there wasn’t much else to do. Reading was an escape and an adventure. You could be whoever you wanted to be and where you wanted to be in history of the future,.”

Child – whose real name is James Grant – studied Law at the University of Sheffield receiving a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) degree in 1977, returning to the university to receive an honorary Doctor of Letters (DLitt) in 2009.

During his student days, he worked backstage in a theatre. After graduating, he worked in theatre and then commercial television joining Granada Television, in Manchester as a presentation director where he was involved with shows including Brideshead Revisited, The Jewel in the Crown, Prime Suspect, and Cracker.

He lost his job in television due to restructuring in the 1990s. “It was a questions of ‘what next?’ I really couldn’t think of what I could do.”

It was then he decided to try writing a book, spent £3.99 on pencils and paper, sat down at his kitchen table, and began to write and Jack Reacher was created.

"The thing about being a reader occasionally you read a perfect book and every other book can be great but not quite perfect and you start thinking ‘I would have done it differently.’ I suddenly realised I had the chance to do that – tow rite a book that turns out exactly as you think it should, And so I gave it a go.”

Where many authors struggle for years to get published, Childs landed a two book deal almost straight away and led to a move to America and the publication of Killing Floor which was to change his life.

"I was very lucky. Back then publishers were prepared to invest five to eight years in you now not so much. The first Reacher book worked fine but it was inevitably the beginning – the second was a littler bugger and they kept growing and the publishers were very patient about. It now you have to make it in three books or that’s it.”

Childs says that his most famous creation Jack Reacher was a reaction against the books he had been reading.

“I was very aware that this it had to be commercial, I had to earn my living from this as I was broke. I was reading all the other new entrants into the genre and they were fantastic but rather than just join them I needed to be different. A lot of crime books are essentially soap operas, fully fleshed out social dramas that are location and workplace based.

"I thought rathe than compete I wanted something distinctive, to get rid of all that social infrastructure and just have one character that is completely rootless and not tied to anything. Someone who show sup and solves somebodies problems and then very self effacingly rides off in to the sunset.

“We have had that type of character stretching back back thousands of years through different cultures. We all have problems wouldn’t it be great if some strong silent type showed up at your door and solved your problems and then walked away. I think people crave that. Reacher is a reinvention for this era of a character that has been around for ever.”

Did he realise just how successful his creation and his books would become?

“Nothing in the world of entertainment is predictable you just do not know. I hoped and dreamed but you can’t expect it,” says Childs. But success he has had having written 30 Reacher books, one turned into a Hollywood blockbuster with Tom Cruise - an avid Reacher fan.

But does has he ever felt constrained buy his creation? "You have to give people what they want and what they expect. I’m not frustrated that I want to write something else I am totally happy writing Reacher. Writing is 100 per cent a craft but it is also 100 per cent a job.” Having said that he has published a book of non-Reacher short stories which he will be talking about in Whitby, alongside what he says is more of a memoir about writing the Reacher books.

"It’s a strange feeling. It is quite exposing. Something I wrote privately is now very public.”

Having lived for many years in America with a ranch in Wyoming, Childs and his wife Jane, retired to the Lake District.

"I am one of those rare Englishmen who haves never lived in London,” he says. “I come from the Midlands, I went to university in Sheffield, worked in Manchester, moved to America and now find our selves in the Lake District an area we loved as tourists.”

As he approaches his 71st birthday Childs is pretty much retired from writing – returning to his first love of reading. "The problem with being a writer is that you don’t get the time to read. I literally have thousands of books stacked up that I want to read.”

Childs has handed over the writing of Reacher to his brother Andrew. "It’s not difficult to hand it over – that’s the whole aim of it to give it away to the reader. I don’t see any difference handing it over to Andrew as I do handing it over to the TV or movie industry,”

Whitby Literature Festival runs from Thursday 6 to Sunday 9 November. whitbylitfest.org.uk