Harold T. Wilkins

Harold T. Wilkins (1891 -- 1960) was a British journalist and amateur historian.

Biography

Educated at Cambridge University in journalism, Wilkins regularly reported on the early television experiments of John L. Baird, during the years 1926 -- 1932. In middle life he published works on the history of piracy, and on the history of the British public schools. He was a particularly prolific writer on the subject of "pirate treasure" and other sea legends, in works such as "Captain Kidd and his Skeleton Island" (1937), "Panorama of Pirate Treasure" (1940) and "Mysteries and Monsters of the Deep" (1948).

After 1947 and the earliest "flying saucer" sighting by
Kenneth Arnold, he became fascinated with the saucer phenomenon and plunged intoextensive historical research in the style of Charles Fort, eventually producing twoFortean saucer books which were widely read during the 1950s, "Flying Saucers on the Moon" (1954) and "Flying Saucers Uncensored" (1955), better known under its US title, "Flying Saucers on the Attack". Wilkins invites comparison with two other British Fortean authors who were his contemporaries, Desmond Leslie and W. Raymond Drake. While Drake patiently dug through ancient literature and legend to find "evidence" of ancient astronauts, Wilkins dug through ancient literature and legend to find "evidence" of earlier sightings of flying saucers. Leslie preferred to mine the bogus "ancient" literature of Theosophy.

Wilkins also published a number of works in the "ancient mystery" vein, influenced by Theosophy and the myth of Atlantis, including "Mysteries of Ancient South America" (1945), "Secret Cities of Old South America" (1952), and "Mysteries of Time and Space" (1958).