John Whitbourn

A tenth generation inhabitant of southern England's 'Downs Country', John Whitbourn is an archeology graduate and published author since 1987. His first book, A Dangerous Energy, won the BBC/Victor Gollancz Fantasy Novel Prize in 1991. Popes and Phantoms and To Build Jerusalem, novels located in his own preferred -- and wildly skewed -- version of history, followed that success. A Dangerous Energy was deservedly described as 'the first Counter-Reformation science fiction novel' and To Build Jerusalem furthers the story of that alternative history. A third volume in this trilogy, The Two Confessions, is now complete. At the same time, Whitbourn has published a steady stream of short stories, including the extensive Binscombe Tales series of supernatural stories set in his ancestral homeland. They were published in collected form as The Binscombe Tales -- Sinister Saxon Stories by the Ash Tree Press in 1997. Whitbourn's works have been described as "constructing an alternative mythology for Britain", as well as "wreaking stylish havoc" (Time Out) with orthodox English history.