John Whitbourn

John Whitbourn (born 1958) is an English author of novels and short stories focusing on alternative histories set in a 'Catholic' universe. His works are characterised by wry humour, the reality of magic and a sustained attempt to reflect on the interaction between religion and politics on a personal and social scale. The Encyclopedia of Fantasy says he "writes well, with dry wit".

In 2014 a new housing development in the village of Binscombe, Surrey, was named Whitbourn Mews in honour of the author and his The Binscombe Tales series.

Works

Whitbourn is an archaeology graduate and published author since 1987. His first book, A Dangerous Energy, won the BBC/Victor Gollancz Fantasy Novel Prize in 1991. In 1562, Elizabeth I suffered from a near-fatal bout of smallpox. In reality she recovered, but that did not occur in the world of A Dangerous Energy and its sequels.

A Dangerous Energy was reviewed as "the first Counter-Reformation science fiction novel", and To Build Jerusalem (1995) furthered the story of that particular alternate history. The Two Confessions, a third and concluding book in the loosely-linked series, The Pevensey Trilogy, was published in 2013.

Whereas A Dangerous Energy focussed on the Church, and To Build Jerusalem on 'high politics', The Two Confessions concerns events in the life of a young would-be industrialist and entrepreneur. Chafing against the reactionary constraints of his civilisation, he stumbles upon a deep secret from the past and is commissioned to solve the associated centuries-old mystery.

Popes and Phantoms (1993) followed the success of A Dangerous Energy and featured the stoic and somewhat chilly 'Admiral Slovo' blazing a trail across the Italian Renaissance – albeit Whitbourn's alternate history version of same. Popes and Phantoms was also published in Russia by Mir Fantastiki. In 2021 the book was republished in its original and substantially larger form as Popes and Phantoms – Redux! Resurgam! complete with new cover.

Whitbourn has published short stories, including the Binscombe Tales series of supernatural stories. They were published in two volume collected form as Binscombe Tales – Sinister Saxon Stories and More Binscombe Tales – Sinister Sutangli Stories by Ash-Tree Press in 1998 and 1999, and reissued in ebook and print editions by Spark Furnace Books in 2011.

His fifth book, The Royal Changeling was published in 1998 by Simon & Schuster's Earthlight imprint. The book recounts the Monmouth Rebellion and Battle of Sedgemoor (1685) while adding a layer of fantasy that brings figures from English mythology to life as both combatants and political forces.

The same company published his trio of books The Downs-Lord triptych, including Downs-Lord Dawn (1999), Downs-Lord Day (2000) and Downs-Lord Doomsday (2002). These depict the adventures of a 17th-century down-at-luck curate who crosses into an alternate Earth where – though all physical features are similar to ours – the hapless local humans are little more than food animals of the monstrous life-form known as Null.

Whitbourn's Frankenstein’s Legions, a Steampunk and zombie-fiction tinged extrapolation of Mary Shelley's classic gothic tale, was published in both print and eBook form in 2012.

Whitbourn's Nothing is True… – The First Book of Farouk, was published in 2018. It comprises a fantasy-tinged and highly unreliable alleged autobiography by the infamous playboy-monarch King Farouk I of Egypt (1920-1965). A companion and concluding volume, And Everything is Permissible – The Second Book of Farouk, covering the deposed King's sybaritic European exile, 1952–65, was published in 2019. Its title completes that of the first book, citing valedictory words attributed to Hassan i Sabbah, twelfth century founder of the Order of Assassins.

In 2020 Whitbourn published The Age of the Triffids, a sequel to John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids (1951).

2020 also saw publication of his novel BABYLONdon, a historical fantasy set during the Gordon Riots of 1780.

Whitbourn's works were reissued in eBook format by Orion Publishing Group Ltd's SF Gateway in 2013.

Altered Englands, Whitbourn's collected short stories 1990 to date, was published in 2020.

In December 2020 Whitbourn also released a 'Young Adult' Fantasy novel, Amy-Faith & The Stronghold, the first volume of a projected series. A sequel, Amy-Faith & The Enemy of Calm, appeared in 2021.

In 2021 Whitbourn won the Cædmon Prize, awarded annually by the Anglo-Saxon studies society Ða Engliscan Gesiðas (The English Companions), for a poem composed in Old English style and judged to be in accordance with "the spirit of Old English poetry".

Complete works

Books

Short stories Title Published in Publisher Year"Waiting for a Bus" Third Book of After Midnight Stories William Kimber 1987"Roots" Fourth Book of After Midnight Stories William Kimber 1988"Waiting for a Bus" (full version) The Year's Best Fantasy Stories 14 DAW Books (USA) 1988"His Holiness Commands""It Has Been Said""No Truce With Kings""Let The Train Take The Strain" Binscombe Tales Haunted Library 1989"Rollover Night""I Could A Tale Unfold""The More It Changes""Appendix: A Complete List of Binscombe Tales" Rollover Night Haunted Library 1990"Every Little Breeze" All Hallows: Journal of the Ghost Story Society. No 2. – 1990"Peace on Earth, Goodwill To Most Men" (paperback 1991) Mystery for Xmas Michael O'Mara 1990"A Partial Cure" Transactions of the Doppelganger Society – 1990"Hello Dolly" Fifth Book of After Midnight Stories Robert Hale 1991"Peace on Earth, Goodwill To Most Men" Mystery for Xmas Michael O'Mara 1991"Be Assured, He Is Not There""The Flowering of the Reformation" Popes & Phantoms Haunted Library 1992"The Fall of a Dictator" All Hallows: Journal of the Ghost Story Society. No 4 – 1993"Justice Without Respite" Ghosts & Scholars. No 15 Haunted Library 1993"Walk This Way" All Hallows: Journal of the Ghost Story Society. No. 7 – 1994"Only One Careful Owner" A Binscombe Tale For Xmas Haunted Library 1994"Here Is My Resignation" – Lychgate 1995"Oh I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside ( Within Reason )" A Binscombe Tale For Summer Haunted Library 1996"Ingratitude" All Hallows: Journal of the Ghost Story Society. No. 15 – 1997"Bury My Heart at Southerham (East Sussex)" Midnight Never Comes Ash-Tree Press 1997"BINSCOMBE TALES" (collected short stories) Sinister Saxon Stories. Vol. 1 Ash-Tree Press 1998"In the Name of Allah, the Omnipotent?" Interzone no 135 – September 1998Introduction to "Litany of Strange Sorrow" by John Gale – Doppelganger Press 1999"MORE BINSCOMBE TALES" (collected short stories) Sinister Sutangli Stories. Vol. 2 Ash-Tree Press 23 April 1999"In the Name of Allah, the Omnipotent?" – Nowa Fantastyka (Poland) September 1999"The Way, the Truth..." The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction – January 2000"Culloden II" All Hallows: Journal of the Ghost Story Society. No. 23 – 2000"Democracy" (part one of the 'Stalinspace' series) – Nowa Fantastyka (Poland) March 2000"Just Hanging Around" Ghosts & Scholars. No. 31 – 2000"Excuse Me" Shadows & Silence Ash-Tree Press December 2000"The Hills Are Alive" Interzone no 165 – March 2001"The Sunken Garden" Acquainted With the Night Ash-Tree Press 2004"A Pillar of the Church" At Ease With the Dead Ash-Tree Press 2007"Enlightenment" Exotic Gothic 2: New Tales of Taboo Ash-Tree Press 2008"You Must Be Cold" Terror Tales of the Scottish Highlands. Ed. Paul Finch Grey Friar Press 2015"Mebyon versus Suna" Terror Tales of Cornwall. Ed. Paul Finch Telos Publishing Ltd. 2017"Altered Englands" – Collected short stories: 1990-date Paperback & Kindle edition – (620 pages) The Parvus Press 2020"And Then There's Place-Name Studies..." The Ghosts & Scholars Book of Landscape Figures. Ed. Rosemary Pardoe Sarob Press 2024

Articles Title Published in Year"The Day The Cornish Invaded Guildford" (1497 rebellion) The Surrey Advertiser 2 June 1989."The Bones of a Revolutionary" (Tom Paine's remains) The Surrey Advertiser 22 September 1989."A Gift To Woden From Pevensey?" The Parish Pump No. 65 'Spring 1990'."A Gift To Woden From Pevensey?" Wiðowinde (Bindweed). Journal of Ða Engliscan Geðisdas (The English Companions) No. 88 August 1990."What Would Have Happened If..." The Catholic Times 6 November 1994"Taking Fantastic Liberties With Our History" (Interview) The Surrey Advertiser 29 May 1998SF & Fantasy Book Reviews. x30. SFX Magazine 1998–2004"Sticks & Stones" Wiðowinde (Bindweed). Journal of Ða Engliscan Geðisdas (The English Companions) No. 113 'Spring 1998'"Why I Like It Here" Downs Country Magazine no. 22 May 1998"In the Shade of the Typewriter Tree" (Interview) Interzone no 135 September 1998"'Orrible Massacre in Sussex" Downs Country Magazine no. 26 January 1999"The 'Prehistory' of St. Edmund's – 1534 – 1899" Essay in The Catholic Parish of St. Edmund, King & Martyr, Godalming, 1899 – 1999 – A Centenary Commemorative History November 1999."Monmouth's Stalin Organs – or Ingenious Inventions and Annoying Authors" The So-ho Gazette – Newsletter of the 1685 Society July 2000"Confessions of a Counter-Reformation Green Anarcho-Jacobite" (Interview) Starburst Magazine No. 266 October 2000"Whitbourn's Wisdom" (Interview) SFX magazine no 73 January 2001"Angles, Saxons, Normans – & Vandals (& Scots)" Wiðowinde (Bindweed). Journal of Ða Engliscan Geðisdas (The English Companions) No 128 'Summer 2002'"Looking For New England" 3SF Magazine No 1 October 2002"A Hymn To Merrily" All Hallows: Journal of the Ghost Story Society No 32 February 2003Author Profile – Phil Rickman SFX magazine no 124 December 2004"Borderline Gothic: Phil Rickman & The Merrily Watkins Series" 21st Century Gothic: Great Gothic Novels Since 2000. Ed. Danel Olson. The Scarecrow Press Inc. 2011Review of All Night North – Songs to Words by Philip Larkin. Various artists, produced by Jim Orwin. 2010 About Larkin – Journal of The Philip Larkin Society. No. 41. Reprinted in bound 25th Anniversary Issue, July 2020 April 2016 "Interview with John Whitbourn by Peter Berard" The San Antonio Review (USA). Volume III. Summer 2020 2020"From Place to Place". Cædmon Prize winning poem Wiðowinde (Bindweed). Journal of Ða Engliscan Geðisdas (The English Companions) No 201 'Spring 2022'"Larkin Goes Country" [Larkin in the lyrics of Rosanne Cash] About Larkin – Journal of The Philip Larkin Society. No. 53. April 2022"Larkin & the Reading Job: Funk or Fix?" About Larkin – Journal of The Philip Larkin Society. No. 54. October 2022"Transcending the Mundane - As recounted to Gareth Worthington" (Interview) Focus - The British Science Fiction Association's Magazine for Writers. No. 78. 'Summer 2024'"Charles Robertson, Orientalist Artist & Godhelmian" The Godalming Trust Newsletter. 'Winter 2024'"Godalming's (And Britain's) First Buddhist?" The Godalming Trust Newsletter. 'Autumn/Winter 2025'"The Play What I Wrote, or Miss Monica Jones’ Literary Afterlife" About Larkin – Journal of The Philip Larkin Society. No. 61. April 2026

Other Publish & Be Damned! The Suppressed/Depressed Edition. Ash-Tree Press. Web publication. 2003.