Lionel Fanthorpe

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Robert Lionel Fanthorpe (born 9 February 1935) is a retired British priest and entertainer. Fanthorpe also worked as a dental technician, journalist, teacher, television presenter, author and lecturer. Born in Dereham in Norfolk, he lives in Cardiff in South Wales, where he served as Director of Media Studies and tutor/lecturer in Religious Studies at the Cardiff Academy Sixth form college.

Biography

Lionel Fanthorpe was educated at Barnard Castle School and Hamond's Grammar School in Swaffham. He left school aged 15 and married Patricia Alice Tooke (born 1938) in 1957. For a period he worked as a journalist on the Norfolk Chronicle and then as a van driver and warehouseman at Hamerton's Stores in Dereham, taking his A-levels by private study at home and by correspondence courses. He attended the teacher-training course at Keswick Hall College in Norwich between 1961 and 1963, where he achieved Distinctions in Educational Theory and Practice and in Advanced Main Theology as part of his Certificate in Education.

Fanthorpe was a schoolmaster at Dereham Secondary Modern School from 1958 to 1961 and again from 1963 to 1967, and a Further Education Tutor based at Gamlingay Village College from 1967 to 1969. Anglican priest in the Church in Wales in 1987, and was also at one time a Freemason in Bowers Lodge in Norwich.

He is the author or co-author of more than 250 books. He presented Channel 4's Fortean TV and has made many appearances at Fortean Times magazine's UnCon, most recently in October 2004 when he gave a talk on "The Knights Templar and their Ancient Secrets". He is a Fellow of the College of Preceptors in Cardiff in South Wales. In 2013 he appeared in the Yesterday series Forbidden History presented by Jamie Theakston.

Family life

thumb|right|Lionel and Patricia Fanthorpe

Fanthorpe's wife Patricia is also his agent, manager and business partner. Moreover, they co-authored a number of books,

| I'll See You When I Get There || Presenter

| Stations of the Cross || Presenter

| Encounters with the Unexplained || Himself

| 2001 || Holy Quiz || Presenter

Writing

Fanthorpe's output can be grouped under three broad headings, as follows:

Approximately 180 paperback novels and short-story collections, in the science fiction and supernatural genres, produced for the UK publisher Badger Books during the 1950s and 1960s.
Numerous books on Christian themes, including the "Thoughts and Prayers" series.
Compilations of Forteana (generally with the word "mystery", "mysteries" or "mysterious" in the title), co-written with his wife Patricia.

Badger Books

Fanthorpe began working for Badger Books in the early 1950s, and over the period of the next 15 years produced many books under different pseudonyms, some of which were pen-names shared with other of Badger Books' writers. These included: Victor La Salle, John E. Muller, and Karl Zeigfreid. Pseudonyms exclusive to Fanthorpe's short story output include Neil Balfort, Othello Baron, Noel Bertram, Oben Leterth, Elton T. Neef, Peter O'Flinn, René Rolant, Robin Tate, and Deutero Spartacus. Names he used for novels include Erle Barton, Lee Barton, Thornton Bell, Leo Brett, Bron Fane, L.P. Kenton, Phil Nobel, Lionel Roberts, Neil Thanet, Trebor Thorpe, Pel Torro, and Olaf Trent.

During his time at Badger Books, Fanthorpe was essentially a small cog in a large publishing machine.

Although generally based on situations and plots familiar from pulp fiction, the novels and stories also used academic and pseudo-academic facts to fill out their background, including the mythology of Ancient Egypt (The Eye of Karnak), Babylon (Unknown Destiny), India (Vengeance of Siva) and Greece (Negative Minus).

The stories also demonstrate the author's interest in Fortean subjects, such as vimanas (The Negative Ones), Chase Vault and the Devil's Footprints (U.F.O. 517), the disappearances of Benjamin Bathurst (Time Echo) and the crew of the Mary Celeste (Barrier 346), as well as the career of Charles Fort himself (The X-Machine). Another novel that discusses Charles Fort explicitly (both in the text and in the back-cover blurb) is Forbidden Planet. This latter novel has no connection with the famous film of the same title, but instead describes a vast interstellar chess game played by superhuman entities using human beings as pawns.

Other novels are pastiches of accepted works of the Western Canon – Beyond the Void is a loose rewrite of Shakespeare's play The Tempest, and in Negative Minus the characters Suessydo and Epolenep re-enact Homeric tales.

Wordcatcher Publishing

, Lionel and his wife began writing for Wordcatcher Publishing, a publishing house based in Cardiff, Wales. So far, under this partnership, they have released the historical fiction titles The Joan of Arc Mysteries and Garan of the Veneti, in addition to multiple books in the 'Thoughts and Prayers' series. Alongside these are a collection of poems, Earth, Sea and Sky, plus a children's book called Parables of the Pond, the latter of which was published under the Auxillium Press imprint.

References

External links

A collection of his talks on Coast to Coast radio
Full list of his works
"By the Seven Green Moons of Gongle!" (negative review of Galaxy 666), by Ken DeVries, in Book-Happy No. 4 (1999)