International best-selling author thriller writer Lee Child is to apply for an Irish passport.

The creator of the Jack Reacher books – which have sold 100 million copies – has a Belfast-born father.

Child hopes an Irish passport will help him to travel through Europe without any perceived post-Brexit problems.

Child is the pen name of Coventry born writer James Grant.

He said: “I haven’t got the passport yet, but I will do very soon.

“It feels like I’m cheating to be honest as I will get in the back door.

“I am not a huge fan of Britain, even though I was born there.

“It’s a silly and frustrating country, which is why I moved to America.”

Child was on an authors’ anti-Brexit tour in Europe.

Asked what would happen to Boris Johnson if locked up for a weekend in a remote Cornwall farmhouse with Jack Reacher, Child replied:

“Only one of them would come out of it alive, and it wouldn’t be Boris.”