Thornton Bell

Robert Lionel Fanthorpe (1935- ) and Patricia Fanthorpe (1938- )

Lionel Fanthorpe was born in Dereham, Norfolk, in 1935. He sold his first story in 1952 and has since written nearly 200 novels and collections of shorts under a variety of pseudonyms. He has worked as a dental technician, factory machinist, farmworker and lorry driver. He has also been a journalist, a lecturer for Cambridge University Board of Extra-Mural Studies and an Industrial Training Manager. He trained as a teacher at Keswick College of Education and took an Open University degree. His main hobbies are Power Lifting and Judo at which he has a Brown Belt awarded by Brian Jacks. Patricia Fanthorpe was born in Beetley, Norfolk, in 1938, and married Lionel in 1957. They have two daughters, Stephanie Dawn (1964) and Fiona Mary (1966). Her own favourite writer is Edgar Rice Burroughs. Her first literary ventures were the co-authorship of various textbooks on metrication, office management, and a payroll guide. The Black Lion took over seven years to write, and it was Patricia's quiet determination which steered it through those years.