Британ жазушысы Роберт Фанторптың өмірі мен шығармашылығы

British writer

Robert Lionel Fanthorpe, FCollP, FRSA, FCMI (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

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.

As of 2019, 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.