John Pearson (author) - Life and Career

Life and Career

Pearson was educated at King's College School Wimbledon and Peterhouse Cambridge where he won a double first in history.

He then worked for The Economist, BBC television and The Sunday Times. Pearson was Fleming's assistant at the London The Sunday Times and would go on to write the first biography of Ian Fleming, 1966's The Life of Ian Fleming.

Pearson was commissioned by Donald Campbell to chronicle his successful attempt on the Land Speed Record in 1964 in Bluebird CN7, resulting in the book Bluebird and the Dead Lake

Pearson also wrote "true-crime" biography, such as The Profession of Violence: an East End gang story about the rise and fall of the Kray twins. In 1967, the Kray twins hired Pearson to write their biography. Over the next several years the brothers, who by now were in jail, would write Pearson. Pearson wrote two further books about the Krays: The Cult of Violence: The Untold Story of the Krays, and Notorious: The Immortal Legend of the Kray Twins. In 2010, Pearson put up for auction more than 160 previously unseen letters and photographs from the Kray twins. The items sold for £20,780.

The Gamblers is an account about the group of gamblers who made up, what was known as the Clermont Set, which included John Aspinall, James Goldsmith and Lord Lucan. Warner Bros. purchased the film rights to the book in 2006. It was currently adapted by William Monahan.

Façades was the first full-scale biography of the literary Sitwell siblings, Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell, and was published in 1978.

Pearson has also written five novels. Storm Jameson praised Pearson's first novel Gone to Timbuctoo: "An unusually good first novel, an exciting story, and a splendid setting in French West Africa. The writing is sharp and witty." Malcolm Muggeridge said, "This is an exceptionally brilliant first novel - exciting, wryly funny and perceptive."

For his next three novels, Pearson did tie-in fictional biographies. Pearson would also become the third official James Bond author of the adult-Bond series, writing in 1973 James Bond: The Authorized Biography of 007, a first-person biography of the fictional agent James Bond. Pearson declined an offer to write further Bond novels. Pearson then did fictional tie-in works about Upstairs, Downstairs (The Bellamys of Eaton Place), and children's aviation hero Biggles.

Pearson has three children from his first marriage. He married his current wife Lynette Dundas on 17 December 1980.