Due to a relative lack of information, it is conceivable though unlikely that two "Donald Thomas"es are here conflated into one individual. It is more likely that the alternate (1935) birthdate refers instead to this Thomas.
Donald Thomas was born in Somerset, and educated at Queen's College, Taunton and Balliol College, Oxford. He currently holds a personal chair as Professor Emeritus of English Literature at Cardiff University.
Early works
Thomas's earliest works seem to have been in the area of legal and historical fact, notably revised texts of Thomas Bayly Howell's collection of state trials, originally collected at the behest of William Cobbett and published between 1809 and 1826. Among his earliest forays into the world of fiction was
Sergeant Verity and the Cracksman, 1974, published under the pseudonym
Francis Selwyn. By the early 1980s, however, he had largely shed the Selwyn pseudonym (returning to it briefly in the late 1980s for some non-fiction works, and once in 2000, for another "Verity" novel), and began writing under his own name, Donald (S.) Thomas, switching from academic study and biography to Sherlockiana and crime fiction, all underpinned with his deep knowledge of the times and cultures of which he writes.
Biographies & fact
He has written a number of books, mostly novels, on a variety of subjects predominantly set in Victorian England. He has also written a small number of non-fiction works dealing with similar subjects/settings, among them a study of the Victorian underworld, and biographies of Robert Browning, the Marquis de Sade, Henry Fielding, and Lewis Carroll.
His 1978 (rev. ed. 2001) biography of Admiral Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald highlights the characteristics of that individual which served in large part as inspiration both for C. S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower, and for Patrick O'Brian's Jack Aubrey. In 1994, his
Hanged in Error? provided an overview/investigation as to the likely guilt of seven individuals all hanged in the UK before its abolition as a means of capital punishment in 1965. The book dealt with the cases of Timothy Evans, John Williams (alias George MacKay, hanged in 1913 for the fatal shooting of Inspector Arthur Walls in Eastbourne during a burglary attempt), Edith Thompson, Robert Hoolhouse, Neville Heath, Charles Jenkins (hanged in 1947 together with Christopher Geraghty for fatally shooting Alec de Antiquis following a botched London jewel robbery), and James Hanratty.
(It is apparently a revised edition of Leslie Hale's 1961 book of the same title.)In academic circles, he is especially well known for his studies of the criminal underworld of London from Victorian times, through World War II to the Kray twins. He has written seven biographies and a handful of other biographical studies, as well as fictionalised biographies of individuals such as Bonnie Prince Charlie. His biography of Lewis Carroll is recommended by
Representative Poetry Online, and his other biographical works can be found on many academic reading lists.
He has edited volumes of Everyman's Library on poets ranging from John Dryden to the Post-Romantics, and also offered a translation of Michel Millot and Jean L'Ange's bawdy 17th century novel
L'École des filles, which is described as "both an uninhibited manual of sexual technique and an erotic masterpiece of the first order" on its back cover.
Fiction
In fiction terms, he is perhaps best known for his more recent works, in particular a series of Sherlock Holmes pastiches, beginning with 1997's
The Secret Cases of Sherlock Holmes. He has also written a number of other titles, and three series featuring the main characters of:
- Alfred Swain, an inspector of Scotland Yard.
- Sonny Tarrant, a "gangland capo", and
- Sgt. William Clarence Verity, a "Sergeant in Scotland Yard's 'Private Clothes Detail'" who investigates the Victorian criminal underground of London, c.1850.
(Verity was created under the pseudonym Francis Selwyn.) His other novels include
The Raising of Lizzie Meek, "based on the scandals surrounding the Victorian miracle-worker Father Ignatius of Capel-y-ffin". Thomas is represented by Bill Hamilton of A.M. Heath & Company, Ltd.
Recent history
Having retired from Cardiff University, he remains affiliated there, as an Associate Research Professor in the School of English, Communication and Philosophy. In 2005, as Personal Chair in the School of English, Communication and Philosophy at Cardiff University, he "donated a selection of his personal archive of research papers, used in writing his series of acclaimed books on the Underworld in Victorian and World War II eras to the University [of Cardiff]'s Special Collections and Archives."
His most recent works include a study on censorship in modern Britain, reviewed as "provocative, timely and disturbing", by Iain Finlayson in
The Times.
