Frederick Nolan
Encyclopedia
Frederick William Nolan is an English
editor and writer, mostly known as Frederick Nolan, but also using the pen names Donald Severn, Daniel Rockfern, Christine McGuire and Frederick H. Christian.
He was educated in Liverpool
and Aberaeron
, Wales
. At the age of twenty one, he began the researches that established him as one of England's leading authorities on the American West. In 1954 he was co-founder of The English Westerners' Society.
At the start of his career, he became first a reader, and later an editor, for Corgi (Bantam) Books in London
. The move to London in the early Sixties made it possible for him to pursue the other consuming interest of his life: the American musical theatre
. During this time, he also began writing western fiction as Frederick H. Christian, a pseudonym derived from his own, his wife Heidi's, and his oldest son's first names.
Over the next decade, while working in publishing - with Transworld
, then Penguin
, Collins
, and Granada
in London, and later with Ballantine
and Warner in New York, he produced fourteen western
s as well as a considerable body of journalism.
On July 4, 1973, Nolan made his own "declaration of independence", quit his job as a highly-paid publishing executive and signed a contract to write eight full length novels in a year. The first of these was the hugely successful The Oshawa Project (published in the US as The Algonquin Project) which was later filmed by MGM as Brass Target, starring Sophia Loren
, John Cassavetes
, Robert Vaughn
, George Kennedy
, Patrick McGoohan
and Max von Sydow
. Since that time he has completed over seventy books, not to mention as many biographical studies and articles for historical journals.
Considered to be one of the foremost authorities on the life and times of Billy the Kid
, and the history of the American West in general, he appears frequently in TV documentaries dealing with the subject, as well as lecturing to historical societies in the UK and US, and also on cruise ships.
His western
s included the Angel
series of books, as well as five additional books in the Sudden
series that had been created by Oliver Strange. These have latterly been reissued under new titles, while the Angel series now appears under the pseudonym Daniel Rockfern.
In 1993 Frederick Nolan received the Border Regional Library Association of Texas’ Award for Literary Excellence. In 2001 he was awarded the first France V. Scholes Prize for outstanding research from the Historical Society of New Mexico and during the same year, he received the first J. Evetts Haley Fellowship from the Haley Memorial Library in Midland, Texas. In 2005 the Western Outlaw-Lawman History Association (WOLA) gave him its highest honour, the Glenn Shirley Award, for his lifetime contribution to outlaw-lawman history; in 2006 The Westerners Foundation named his The West of Billy the Kid as one of the 100 most important 20th-century historical works on the American West, and in 2007 the National Outlaw-Lawman Association (NOLA) awarded him its prestigious William D. Reynolds Award in Recognition of Outstanding Research and Writing in Western History.
Garrett Dossier
(and fifteen other titles in the series)
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
editor and writer, mostly known as Frederick Nolan, but also using the pen names Donald Severn, Daniel Rockfern, Christine McGuire and Frederick H. Christian.
He was educated in Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
and Aberaeron
Aberaeron
Aberaeron |Aeron]] being a Welsh god of war) is a seaside resort town in Ceredigion, Wales. Situated between Aberystwyth and Cardigan, it is home to the headquarters of Ceredigion County Council. The population was 1520 in 2001.-History and design:...
, Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
. At the age of twenty one, he began the researches that established him as one of England's leading authorities on the American West. In 1954 he was co-founder of The English Westerners' Society.
At the start of his career, he became first a reader, and later an editor, for Corgi (Bantam) Books in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
. The move to London in the early Sixties made it possible for him to pursue the other consuming interest of his life: the American musical theatre
Musical theatre
Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...
. During this time, he also began writing western fiction as Frederick H. Christian, a pseudonym derived from his own, his wife Heidi's, and his oldest son's first names.
Over the next decade, while working in publishing - with Transworld
Transworld (company)
Transworld Publishers Inc. is a British publishing division of Random House and belongs to Bertelsmann, one of the world's largest media groups. It was established in 1950, and for many years it was the British division of Bantam Books. It publishes fiction and non fiction titles by various...
, then Penguin
Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a publisher founded in 1935 by Sir Allen Lane and V.K. Krishna Menon. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its high quality, inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths and other high street stores for sixpence. Penguin's success demonstrated that large...
, Collins
HarperCollins
HarperCollins is a publishing company owned by News Corporation. It is the combination of the publishers William Collins, Sons and Co Ltd, a British company, and Harper & Row, an American company, itself the result of an earlier merger of Harper & Brothers and Row, Peterson & Company. The worldwide...
, and Granada
Granada Ltd.
Granada plc is a former British conglomerate which was best known as the former parent of the Manchester-based Granada Television....
in London, and later with Ballantine
Ballantine Books
Ballantine Books is a major book publisher located in the United States, founded in 1952 by Ian Ballantine with his wife, Betty Ballantine. It was acquired by Random House in 1973, which in turn was acquired by Bertelsmann AG in 1998 and remains part of that company today. Ballantine's logo is a...
and Warner in New York, he produced fourteen western
Western (genre)
The Western is a genre of various visual arts, such as film, television, radio, literature, painting and others. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West, hence the name. Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of...
s as well as a considerable body of journalism.
On July 4, 1973, Nolan made his own "declaration of independence", quit his job as a highly-paid publishing executive and signed a contract to write eight full length novels in a year. The first of these was the hugely successful The Oshawa Project (published in the US as The Algonquin Project) which was later filmed by MGM as Brass Target, starring Sophia Loren
Sophia Loren
Sophia Loren, OMRI is an Italian actress.In 1962, Loren won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in Two Women, along with 21 awards, becoming the first actress to win an Academy Award for a non-English-speaking performance...
, John Cassavetes
John Cassavetes
John Nicholas Cassavetes was an American actor, screenwriter and filmmaker. He acted in many Hollywood films, notably Rosemary's Baby and The Dirty Dozen...
, Robert Vaughn
Robert Vaughn
Robert Francis Vaughn, , is an American actor noted for stage, film and television work. His best known roles include the suave spy Napoleon Solo in the 1960s television series The Man from U.N.C.L.E., wealthy detective Harry Rule in the 1970s television series The Protectors, Albert Stroller in...
, George Kennedy
George Kennedy
George Harris Kennedy, Jr. is an American actor who has appeared in over 200 film and television productions. He is perhaps most familiar as the convict Dragline in Cool Hand Luke , airline troubleshooter Joe Patroni in the Airport series of disaster movies from the 1970s and...
, Patrick McGoohan
Patrick McGoohan
Patrick Joseph McGoohan was an American-born actor, raised in Ireland and England, with an extensive stage and film career, most notably in the 1960s television series Danger Man , and The Prisoner, which he co-created...
and Max von Sydow
Max von Sydow
Max von Sydow is a Swedish actor. He has also held French citizenship since 2002. He has starred in many films and had supporting roles in dozens more...
. Since that time he has completed over seventy books, not to mention as many biographical studies and articles for historical journals.
Considered to be one of the foremost authorities on the life and times of Billy the Kid
Billy the Kid
William H. Bonney William H. Bonney William H. Bonney (born William Henry McCarty, Jr. est. November 23, 1859 – c. July 14, 1881, better known as Billy the Kid but also known as Henry Antrim, was a 19th-century American gunman who participated in the Lincoln County War and became a frontier...
, and the history of the American West in general, he appears frequently in TV documentaries dealing with the subject, as well as lecturing to historical societies in the UK and US, and also on cruise ships.
His western
Western (genre)
The Western is a genre of various visual arts, such as film, television, radio, literature, painting and others. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West, hence the name. Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of...
s included the Angel
Angel (disambiguation)
An angel is a supernatural being, present in many religions.Angel may also refer to:-Films:* Angel , an American comedy drama directed by Ernst Lubitsch and starring Marlene Dietrich* Angel , an animated short...
series of books, as well as five additional books in the Sudden
Sudden
James Green aka Sudden is a fictional character created by the author Oliver Strange and after his death carried on by Frederick H. Christian. The books are centred around a gunfighter in the American Wild West era, who is in search of two men who cheated his foster father. Jim the young man...
series that had been created by Oliver Strange. These have latterly been reissued under new titles, while the Angel series now appears under the pseudonym Daniel Rockfern.
In 1993 Frederick Nolan received the Border Regional Library Association of Texas’ Award for Literary Excellence. In 2001 he was awarded the first France V. Scholes Prize for outstanding research from the Historical Society of New Mexico and during the same year, he received the first J. Evetts Haley Fellowship from the Haley Memorial Library in Midland, Texas. In 2005 the Western Outlaw-Lawman History Association (WOLA) gave him its highest honour, the Glenn Shirley Award, for his lifetime contribution to outlaw-lawman history; in 2006 The Westerners Foundation named his The West of Billy the Kid as one of the 100 most important 20th-century historical works on the American West, and in 2007 the National Outlaw-Lawman Association (NOLA) awarded him its prestigious William D. Reynolds Award in Recognition of Outstanding Research and Writing in Western History.
Novels
- The Oshawa Project (published in the US as The Algonquin Project, a best seller on both sides of the Atlantic, filmed as Brass TargetBrass TargetBrass Target is a 1978 American war film, based on the novel The Algonquin Project by Frederick Nolan and directed by John Hough. It stars John Cassavetes, Robert Vaughn, George Kennedy, Patrick McGoohan and Max von Sydow....
in 1978) - The Mittenwald Syndicate another bestselling thriller about the Reichsbank robbery in Germany at the end of World War Two.
- Carver's Kingdom An historical novel about the building of the American Transcontinental railroad
- White Nights, Red Dawn An historical novel set amid the turmoil of the Russian Revolution.
- A Promise of GloryAn historical novel about an American family during the Revolution
- Blind Duty An historical novel about the same family during the Civil War.
- Field of Honor An historical novel about a family during the Spanish-American War
- Wolf Trap A thriller about the 1942 assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in Prague.
- Red Centre A hi-tech espionage thriller.
Garrett Dossier
- Sweet Sister Death A prescient thriller featuring a terrorist strike in New York
- Alert State Black Charles Garrett fights terrorism in Germany.
- Designated Assassin This time the terrorists are Irish.
- Rat Run Garrett combats a group planning the biggest ecological disaster ever.
As Christine McGuire
- Until Proven Guilty
- Until Justice is Done
- Until Death Do Us Part
As Frederick H. Christian
- Sudden Strikes Back
- Sudden at Bay
- Sudden, Apache Fighter
- Sudden - Troubleshooter
- Sudden, Dead or Alive!
As Daniel Rockfern
- Standoff at Liberty
- Ride Out to Vengeance
- Ambush in Purgatory
- Long Ride Into Hell
- Ride Clear of Daranga
- Bad Day at Agua Caliente
- Massacre in Madison
- Showdown at Trinidad
- Shootout at Fischer's Crossing
- Manhunt in Quemado
- Duel at Cheyenne
Nonfiction works
- The Life and Death of John Henry Tunstall
- Rodgers & Hammerstein: The Sound of Their Music
- The Lincoln County War: A Documentary History
- Lorenz Hart: A Poet on Broadway
- The West of Billy the Kid
- The Wild West: History, Myth and the Making of America
- Tascosa, Its Life and Gaudy Times
- The Billy the Kid Reader
Translated from French
- Lucky Luke: Jesse James
- Lucky Luke: The Stage Coach
- Lucky Luke: The Dashing White Cowboy
(and fifteen other titles in the series)
External links
- http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/latimes/access/58370920.html?dids=58370920:58370920&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&type=current&date=Aug+20%2C+2000&author=RICHARD+BENKE&pub=Los+Angeles+Times&desc=British+Writer+Shoots+Holes+in+the+Legend+of+a+Gunslinging+Billy+the+Kid%3B+History%3A+Author+says+much+of+the+misinformation+can+be+traced+to+a+book+partly+written+by+the+sheriff+who+killed+Billy+in+1881.&pqatl=google"British Writer Shoots Holes in the Legend of a Gunslinging Billy the Kid; History: Author says much of the misinformation can be traced to a book partly written by the sheriff who killed Billy in 1881" - Los Angeles Times]
- "FOLKLORE SAVED, PASSED ALONG BY WESTERN UNIVERSITY PRESS" - Rocky Mountain News
- "Was 'Blood and Guts' General killed by Conspirators?" - The Montreal Gazette
- "'Brass Target': The Story Behind the Movie" - The Hour
- "Crime" - New York Times
- "Billy The Kid Still Making News" - CBS News
- "The Kid is Alright" - Phoenix New Times
- The Death of General Patton