Britain's foremost writer on crime turns to the disappearance of Lord Lucan. The basis of the upcoming ITV drama, Lucan, starring Rory Kinnear and Christopher Eccleston For over thirty years, John Pearson has provided us with literary exposures of some of the most enigmatic people and underground organisations of our modern world. The Gamblers follows the fortunes of five men at the centre of the ultra-fashionable Clermont Set: the Clermont Club's eccentric founder John Aspinall; Dominic Elwes, who was to betray the Set's code of silence; the socialite owner of Annabel's, Mark Birley; the womanising, multi millionaire James Goldsmith; and the infamous Lord 'Lucky' Lucan. At the heart of the Set lay a belief that risk-takers are the people who make civilisation tick.Cruel, heartless and snobbish, they gambled with their fortunes and kept a stiff upper lip when they lost.This and a loyalty to each other that transcended everything else enabled them to rise above crises such as the long affair between Birley's wife and James Goldsmith, and the facial mutilation of the Birley's son by one of Aspinall's tigers.Pearson revels in the charisma, charm and wit of these dastardly but debonair millionaires, and reveals how their code led to one of the great unsolved mysteries of the twentieth century.
Author
John Pearson is a writer best associated with James Bond creator Ian Fleming. He was Fleming's assistant at the London Sunday Times and would go on to write the first biography of Ian Fleming, 1966's The Life of Ian Fleming. Pearson also wrote "true-crime" biographies, such as The Profession of Violence: an East End gang story about the rise and fall of the Kray twins. Pearson would also become the third official James Bond author of the adult-Bond series, writing in 1973 James Bond: The Authorised Biography of 007, a first-person biography of the fictional agent James Bond. Although the canonical nature of this book has been debated by Bond fans since it was published, it was officially authorised by Glidrose Publications, the official publisher of the James Bond chronicles. Glidrose reportedly considered commissioning Pearson to write a new series of Bond novels in the 1970s, but nothing came of this. 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 wrote the non-fiction book, The Gamblers, 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. The film rights to the book were purchased by Warner Bros. in 2006. He also wrote Façades, the first full-scale biography of the literary Sitwell siblings, Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell, published in 1978. Pearson has also written five novels: Gone To Timbuctoo (1962) - winner of the Author's Club First Novel Award James Bond: The Authorised Biography of 007 (1973) The Bellamy Saga (1976) Biggles: The Authorized Biography (1978) The Kindness of Dr. Avicenna (1982).
