Peter Brookesmith

Peter Brookesmith is an English writer and publisher.

At different times in his life Peter Brookesmith has been an advertising copywriter, putative literary critic and musicologist (his D. Phil thesis was on folk and rock music), machine tool operator, editor of and consultant on highly illustrated more-or-less non-fiction publishing projects, record producer and occasional songwriter, brewer’s drayman, market research analyst and publishing manager, designer of combat-oriented firearms training courses, assistant baker, and author of a somewhat eclectic collection of books that just pass muster as non-fiction. He has twice harangued the Oxford Union on the non-existence of flying saucers and aliens in our midst, and lectured various other gatherings on matters ranging from conspiracy theory to the blues. He has variously been described as ‘scary’, ‘handsome and charming’, and (by Private Eye) ‘a gun-toting lecher’; as well as, more enigmatically, ‘a hard version of Rolf Harris’.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 1995–2007

UFO: THE COMPLETE SIGHTINGS CATALOGUEBarnes & Noble (USA); Blandford, (UK) 1995 ‘If someone wanted to read just one book to find out what ufology is all about, I don’t think they could go far wrong with this... a very useful reference work... a bloody good UFO book’ —John Rimmer, Magonia

UFO: THE GOVERNMENT FILESBarnes & Noble (USA); Blandford, (UK) 1996 ‘Does he reveal a Cosmic Watergate? A Comic Watergate more like. Confusion, misunderstanding and belief seem to lie at the heart of any governments' UFO dealings and Brookesmith chronicles this well. …Blandford are to be commended for daring to publish a book which clearly flies in the face of current ufological wisdom. Buy it.’ —Andy Roberts, UFO Times

THE FIGHTING HANDGUNwith Richard Law: Arms & Armour Press (UK) Spring 1997 This book was something of a personal success – it probably does contain the best general history and hands-on accounts of handguns then written – but no sooner had quill touched parchment on the publishing contract than Thomas Hamilton used a legally-held handgun to slaughter 16 children and their teacher in Scotland. Sales, consequently, were slow: but the book is still in print

FUTURE PLAGUES: The Past, Present and Future of Killer DiseasesBarnes & Noble (USA); Cassell (UK) Fall 1997 Part historical overview of plagues and pandemics from Classical times to the contemporary spread of AIDS, and part reflection the future socio-economic effects of plagues, with excursions into biological warfare and the thriving life of parasites and bacteria in a ‘normal’ human society

UFOs & UFOLOGY: The First Fifty Yearswith Paul Devereux: Cassell (UK); Facts on File (USA) Fall 1997 ‘As a chronicle of the recent history of the UFO phenomenon and the emergence of ufology this book is unsurpassed. Many readers ... may be disappointed by the authors' stance: they do not automatically assume a nuts and bolts extraterrestrial origin for UFOs. Devereux’s and Brookesmith’s flying objects remain unidentified as they provide a review of UFOs as the only type of a phenomenon we can say for sure they are – social and cultural.’ —Dr Andrew Donaldson, University of Newcastle (Amazon.com)

ALIEN ABDUCTIONSBarnes & Noble (USA), Blandford (UK), Spring 1998 Selected as one of The Anomalist magazine’s Best Books of 1998. From the commendation: ‘UFO abductions don't easily lend themselves to dispassionate treatments. …Evenhandedness, however, doesn't necessarily equate with unopinionated, and in the end Brookesmith comes firmly down on the side of abductions as a psychological, as opposed to a literal, physical phenomenon.’

BUGS, BLOODSUCKERS, BACTERIA...Barnes & Noble (USA), Blandford (UK), Spring 1999 Pretty much what it says on the packet – a wryly good-humoured survey of the strange little creatures (and a few large ones) that infest our bodies, our pets, and our homes, illustrated with some stunning photographs

SNIPER: Training, Techniques, WeaponsSt Martin’s Press (USA), Spellmount (UK), 2001 ‘This book is one of the best sniper books ever written. Me being a former sniper have found this book to be extremely accurate. This book flows very well also. I would highly recommend buying this book.’ —Anonymous (not surprisingly) Amazon.com reader review

KNOW YOUR HORSE*Barnes & Noble (USA) and Grant (UK), Spring 2004 Inspired by PBS’s editorial contributions to Mitchell Beazley’s The Life of Horses. Predicated on the notion that horses should be fed, housed, handled and ridden with their ancient instincts as herd, prey and flight animals in mind. Covers equine social life, languages, physical senses and emotional outlook, and gives sound advice on essential welfare and riding and handling skills, plus snapshots of some 50 horse breeds. *Published under the (mis)title Looking After Your Horse

ENCOUNTERS AT INDIAN HEADReassessing the 1961 ‘alien abduction’ of Betty and Barney HillEditor and contributor, with Karl T. Pflock: Anomalist Books 2007 Papers presented at a private, by-invitation symposium of seasoned researchers, held at Indian Head, New Hampshire; with further commentary, appendices, maps and photographs. The symposium was conceived by PBS, the book by co-editor Karl Pflock. All aspects from reasoned acceptance to outright dismissal of the world’s first publicly-known ‘alien abduction’ are discussed by the contributors who, besides the editors, are: Dr Thomas ‘Ed’ Bullard, Dr Hilary Evans, Martin Kottmeyer, Robert Sheaffer, Dennis Stacy, Prof. Marcello Truzzi, and Walter N. Webb

SELECTED EDITORIAL WORK AND JOURNALISM 1980–2008

THE UNEXPLAINED: Mysteries of Mind, Space & Time First published 1980–83 by Orbis, in 156 weekly issues. This was Orbis’s greatest commercial success in the 1980s; with sales of the first UK edition totalling 18 million copies. There were some 20 spin-off books; the series has since been marketed in the USA and the UK as a continuity set under the title Mysteries of Mind, Space & Time. PBS conceived the project, edited the first edition, and contributed many articles to it; and wrote long introductions to about 15 of the spin-off books

HISTORY OF ROCK Chronological, critical and contextual account of popular music 1955–1985. PBS helped devise and plan this 120-issue Orbis partwork, was consulting editor throughout, and contributed many articles to it. He was also instrumental in producing the 40-volume, double-album series of companion recordings

GREENPEACE ‘SEAS OF EUROPE’ SERIESCollins & Brown 1991–94, various editors: three volumes, titledThe North Sea, The Mediterranean, and The Baltic PBS wrote the final chapter in each book on the direct actions undertaken by Greenpeace in each region (one old hand called them ‘inspiring’), and for the final two books also wrote general histories of the Baltic and Mediterranean regions’ ecology and development; also assisted in editing all three volumes

SKEPTICAL JOURNALISM PBS has deployed what someone called his ‘acerbic wit’ in many articles and regular features to Fortean Times, Magonia: the journal of contemporary vision and belief, and The Skeptic, without exception taking fantastic, illogical or just plain fraudulent claims for paranormal phenomena to the cleaners. In consequence he is proud to have become (among True Believers) one of the most loathed and reviled of commentators on such arcane matters as flying saucers, alien abductions, spontaneous human combustion, crop circles, shenanigans in séance rooms, spoon-bending, and suchlike carryings-on

THE SHOOTER’S JOURNAL PBS redesigned this quarterly magazine in 1999, and now acts as editor and occasional contributor. Read this at your peril if you think the police are entirely honest or that government, of whatever stripe, has your best interests at heart when it comes to firearms legislation and administration in the United Kingdom

FIRECREST INTERNATIONAL LIMITEDFireCrest Fiction: www.firecrest-fiction.comImprint launched in May 2007 to “keep the art of the novel alive”.

PBS kept bumping into writers with several books (a couple of dozen, in one case), even literary prizes, to their name – and who, all of a sudden, couldn’t get published any more. Worse, he was meeting first-time novelists with tremendous potential and fine manuscripts to sell who couldn’t get even a toehold on the publishing ladder. Something had to be done. Not only are what he calls “real novelists, whose prime interest is addressing the human condition” not getting into print, but “readers are being deprived of genuinely original writing.” The reason, he says, lies in the huge publishing conglomerates, which are largely run by accountants. They only want the kind of books that fit into pre-digested marketing genres, and that (they think) will sell in tens of thousands. FireCrest Fiction is different.

FireCrest is dedicated to publishing genuinely creative new fiction and to republishing neglected, long out-of-print masterpieces. Already out under the FireCrest banner are The Drowned Sister by Jane Heather, The Green Hat by Michael Arlen (a mega-best-seller of 1924), and The Extraordinary Consequences of Señor Higgins’s Holiday in Estragon, by enigmatic expatriate P.L. Frankson. Released in May 2008 were an intriguing psychological thriller by twenty-something Elizabeth Hopkinson, along with The Merrythought by Shelagh Meyer. Under her former name, Shelagh Macdonald, she won the 1977 Whitbread Prize for her novel No End to Yesterday. FireCrest is republishing an amended and corrected edition of this title as a companion volume to The Merrythought.

FireCrest’s next phase will concentrate on republishing more neglected 20th-century masterworks, although, says PBS, “extracting rights to perform the simple operation of making money for the original publishers and authors’ estates can be remarkably like extracting blood from a stone while swimming backwards through treacle on a foggy night. This is bizarre, given that most of these rights are held by conglomerates who are passionate about making loads of dosh but don’t seem inclined to exploit some of the finest writers on their backlists. The stories one could tell! Perhaps it’s time to start a guerrilla war with these people.” “First, though, we want to make a mark for publishing novelists who are now getting rejection slips for all the wrong reasons.”