Skip to main content
BECOME A FLEMING INSIDER > JOIN HERE
John Pearson | Author
John Pearson, author, biographer and journalist, achieved world renown for his biographies of Ian Fleming, the Sitwells and the Kray Brothers, as well as many others.
After unstable employment as a journalist throughout his early career, Pearson was offered a job by Ian Fleming and became his assistant at The Sunday Times, editing the Atticus column. Having worked alongside Fleming for a number of years, he began to write his own works. He started with award-winning novel Gone to Timbuctoo (1962), inspired by a research trip to West Africa from which he returned unrecognisable to his children with a long black beard and a white fez. It was in 1966, two years after Fleming’s death, when Pearson’s The Life of Ian Fleming was published. It was extremely popular and was soon serialised in Life magazine. He went on to write James Bond: The Authorised Biography in 1973.
A brief stint in Italy after this success was soon followed by a return to the UK, where he continued to write biographies. The death of both Kray twins led to the publication of two groundbreaking books based on their lives, which were adapted into the film Legend in 2015. John Pearson died in 2021 at the age of 91.
