Bear Grylls: 'Sharing the story of Jesus is the proudest thing I've ever done'

The adventurer opens up about writing the story of Jesus as a thriller, his complicated relationship with church and why faith is like plugging in a toaster 

It’s midnight in the jungle, but Bear Grylls OBE isn’t sleeping. He’s in a shack, writing through the night. “Wild horses couldn’t stop me,” he says as we chat about how those words became a novel, The Greatest Story Ever Told – a retelling of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection from multiple perspectives. 

Grylls, 51, is one of the most famous adventurers in the world. The former SAS trooper and chief scout fronts some of the most-watched TV shows on the planet, including Man vs. Wild and Running Wild. Why write a book about Jesus? The short answer seems to be because he had to. 

“I literally woke up one morning and knew I was going to write this thing, with utter conviction,” he tells me. “I got straight on the phone to the publishers and said: ‘It’s going to be the biggest-selling book in history.’ They laughed. I said: ‘It will! After the Bible and the Qur’an, it’s going to the biggest.’”

I have no reason to doubt Grylls’ sincerity. But the claim that The Greatest Story Ever Told is going to outsell Harry Potter, The Hobbit and every Agatha Christie whodunit ever written is hard to believe. Is it just a pipe dream? Maybe. But I’m not brave enough to tell a man who literally climbed Everest after breaking his back in three places that he can’t do something.