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Neil
Hanson at Transworld Publishers |
| Neil Hanson: Ilkley Writer & Author |
 (Photo © John Alexander) |
| Neil Hanson lives in Ilkley with his partner and children. He is a prolific and successful author with over thirty published novels and non-fiction books to his credit. Many have been bestsellers, yet his name remains little known by the general public, since the vast majority of his books have been published under various noms de plumes. Born and raised in Yorkshire, Neil took a degree in philosophy at Trinity College Oxford. His chequered career since then has included a spell as a holiday camp redcoat - 'For four months I dined exclusively in the camp cafeteria and went home at the end of the summer with the first case of scurvy seen in England since the time of Nelson.' He has also run several art and photography galleries, edited the drinker's bible The Good Beer Guide, travelled round the world twice 'including my first experience of being tear-gassed - four times - in Papua New Guinea' and owned the Tan Hill Inn - the highest pub in Britain, four miles from its next door neighbour. Neil has also been an art critic and a rugby league correspondent, has edited a sports newspaper, made a film with BBC Newcastle and another with Chameleon TV (for Yorkshire TV), and "novelised" a BBC Television series. He's been a columnist for Country Walking and Open Rugby magazines, broadcast for BBC Radio, been British correspondent for IRN New Zealand, worked for Radio 2GB in Sydney, and written for every British national newspaper and for media around the world. For the last dozen years or so he's been a full term writer, working on both his own work and as a literary 'ghost'. His celebrity clients - both men and women - include a number of household names: SAS men, pilots, travellers and adventurers, a treasure diver, an IRA informer, a round the world walker, an undercover investigator, a former coach of the England football team and the Australian Socceroos, and the former captains of the England rugby union and Great Britain rugby league teams. 'I've been very lucky to work as a ghostwriter,' Neil said. 'It's been a good way of learning the craft of writing and you do get your plot-lines delivered to your door. It's also enabled me to meet some fascinating people with incredible tales to tell. However, I can't deny that I prefer to write my own choice of work, under my own name.' Neil's most recent books under his own name are The Custom of the Sea (Doubleday 1999, Corgi 2000)- the shocking true story of a nineteenth century shipwreck and the murder and cannibalism that followed it, and The Dreadful Judgement: The True Story of the Great Fire of London (Doubleday 2001; Corgi autumn 2002) Both books have been published around the world including the United States, Germany, Portugal, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, with rights under negotiation in several other countries. As well as appearing at the Ilkley Literature Festival in his home town, he has spoken at literary events in London, New York, Sydney, Brisbane, Auckland and Wellington. When not working, he's often to be found running over the moors around his home. |
| ISBN
0-385-60134-4 The Dreadful Judgement  Cover painting: Lieve Verschuier (1630-86), Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, Hungary © The Bridgeman Art Library |
| If the storm that struck the Grand Banks off Newfoundland in October 1991 was the Perfect Storm, the fire that destroyed London in September 1666 was the Perfect Fire.
A fire needs only three things: a spark to ignite it, and fuel and oxygen to feed it. In 1666, a ten-month drought had turned London into a tinderbox. The older parts of the city were almost entirely composed of wood-frame buildings and shanties little more than paper shacks. The riverside wharves and warehouses were stacked with wood, coal and every combustible material known to seventeenth-century man. The fuel was already in place. A fierce easterly gale springing up at the start of September provided the oxygen. All that was now needed was a spark. On 2 September 1666, London ignited. Over the next four days the gale blew without interruption and the resulting firestorm destroyed the whole city. The Dreadful Judgement is a historical detective story, combining modern knowledge of the physics of fire, forensics, and fire and arson investigation, with moving eye-witness accounts contained in contemporary documents, private papers and personal letters, to produce a searing depiction of the Great Fire of London and the human stories of those who lived through it and those who did not. Meticulously researched, vividly written, this astonishing true story of one of the most famous yet least understood events in history casts fresh light on the shadowy background to the Great Fire, and brings to startling life the power of one of mankind's oldest, most implacable enemies. Praise for 'The Dreadful Judgement': The True Story of the Great Fire of London
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NEIL HANSON is the author of over thirty books written under his own name and a variety of pseudonyms, including the acclaimed
'The Custom of the Sea.'
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