biography

John Burke was born in Rye, Sussex in 1922, but was brought up in Liverpool where his father became a Chief Inspector of Police. During the war he served with the RAF, REME, and on attachement to the Royal Marines during the Liberation of Europe. He had a number of short stories published - the first of them in the Forces newspaper, The Orkney Blast, during his service in Orkney - and after the war won an Atlantic Award in Literature from the Rockerfeller Foundation for his novel, Swift Summer.

While writing further books he also worked first as secretary to the Production Managers of publishers Robert Hale and then later as Production Manager for Museum Press, Editorial Manager for the Paul Hamlyn group, and European Story editor for 20th Century Fox films before becoming a full-time freelance author. As well as novelising a wide range of film and TV scripts, including Look Back In Anger, A Hard Day's Night, The Hammer Horror Film Omnibus, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and The Bill and London's Burning, he wrote a number of thrillers and weird tales, and non-fiction works such as Musical Landscapes and An Illustrated History of Music. He also edited 3 volumes of the Unease series (Tales. More Tales, New Tales) and the series was even picked up for television.

In his spare time he has been a keen musician, playing the clarinet in both chamber music and jazz groups. In the earlier Mastermind TV programmes he won his first round on the subject of the Danish Composer Carl Neilsen.

John Burke has five daughers and two sons. For many years his home with his second wife Jean was in Suffolk, where they collaborated under the pseudonym of Harriet Esmond on a series of 'Victorian Gothic' romances, and he served on the Council of East Anglian Writers. He also contributed to a number of Readers Digest travel books, many of which took him over large parts of Scotland (including return visits to the Orkney Isle) and led ultimately to his writing A Travellers History of Scotland and to him and Jean settling in the hospitable South West coast for under two decades.

A stunning collection of his short stories was released in 2000 by Ash Tree Press, entitled We've Been Waiting For You (And Other Tales of Unease). Showcasing work from 1952 onwards, the volume with an introduction from fellow Pan Book of Horror Stories author Nicholas Royle, proved beyond doubt what a consumate writer he is, and with a new story We've Been Waiting For You making us all too aware that he could still make us feel uneasy and make sleep that little harder to achieve after reading it with the lights dimmed...

Recently he has concentrated on a sequence of mystery novels mainly set in the Scottish Borders - though Hang Time, takes place in his old haunts in Suffolk, and is published by one of his earliest employers, Robert Hale. His latest new novel called The Merciless Dead also published by Hale was released in October 2009 and John is now planning his next one.

John Burke 1966

John Burke 2007