Burke was born on 8 March 1922 in
Rye, Sussex, and educated at Holt High School, Liverpool, now known as
Childwall Academy. He served in the
Royal Air Force,
Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, and the
Royal Marines during the war. After working for the publishers Museum Press and the Books for Pleasure Group, he was a Public Relations and Publications Executive for Shell (1959–63) and Story Editor for Twentieth Century-Fox (1963–65) before becoming a full-time writer in 1966. Writing as Jonathan Burke, J. F. Burke and John Burke, he produced several suspense stories and psychological thrillers, including the Atlantic Award in Literature winning
Swift Summer (1949; by J. F. Burke),
These Haunted Streets (1950),
Chastity House (1952),
Echo of Barbara (1959;
filmed in 1960) and
The Twisted Tongues (1964). Some of his other novels appeared under the pseudonyms of Joanna Jones, Sara Morris, Jonathan George and Owen Burke. He achieved equal popularity with his science fiction short stories in magazines like
New Worlds and
New Frontiers, and the best of these were collected in
Alien Landscapes (1955). His first two SF novels,
The Dark Gateway (1953) and
The Echoing Worlds (1954), both dealt with the theme of parallel universes; and
Pursuit Through Time (1956) described an attempt to change the course of history while time-travelling into the past. For more than thirty years Burke
novelised a large number of stage plays, film and TV scripts, notably
John Osborne's
The Entertainer and
Look Back in Anger,
The Angry Silence (all 1960),
Flame in the Streets (1961),
The Lion of Sparta (1961; the film was released as
The 300 Spartans),
The Boys (1962),
The System (1963), ''
A Hard Day's Night (1964), Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965), That Magnificent Air Race
(1965; the film was released as Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines), The Hammer Horror Omnibus
(1966/7; two volumes), Till Death Us Do Part, Privilege (both 1967), Smashing Time'', Ian Fleming's
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (both 1968),
Moon Zero Two (1969), ''
Luke's Kingdom (1976), King and Castle (1986) and a series of The Bill'' novels, beginning in 1985. ''A Hard Day's Night'' came close to not being published at all. The then Director of
Pan Books, Clarence Paget, saw
the Beatles as nothing but a passing fad, and it took Burke and many of Pan's office workers – all Beatles fans – to persuade Paget otherwise. The book went on to sell 1.25 million copies. Several other tie-ins appeared under the names of Martin Sands and Robert Miall, including
Maroc 7 (1967),
The Best House in London (1969), two
Jason King thrillers in 1972, and also
UFO and its sequel
UFO 2 (1970/1971). Burke also wrote the source story for the 1967 cult horror film
The Sorcerers. The screenplay has now been published in a limited edition of 500 copies. Burke also contributed to the TV series
Late Night Horror (BBC, 1968),
Tales of Unease (
LWT, 1970) and
The Frighteners (LWT, 1972). Among Burke's later novels were a series featuring the Victorian psychic investigator and
occult detective Dr Alex Caspian (a stage magician by day, assisted by his wife, Bronwen), and a further three Victorian Gothic suspense novels (by "Harriet Esmond") written in collaboration with his wife Jean. These were always carefully researched, and explored the regions described in these stories. He edited a trilogy of books under the "Unease" banner:
Tales of Unease (1966),
More Tales of Unease (1969) and
New Tales of Unease (1976). Several ghost and horror stories appeared in the Pan "Ghost Book" series, the
Pan Book of Horror Stories,
New Terrors,
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror and his short stories were collected in the
Ash Tree Press volume ''We've Been Waiting For You'' (2000), which included his most celebrated story, "And Cannot Come Again". He wrote two original short stories that were subsequently published in
Johnny Mains's tribute book
Back From The Dead: The Legacy of the Pan Book of Horror Stories (2010), was interviewed at length about his tie-in career for
Bedabbled! magazine (2011) and was in talks to publish a novel that began life in the 1950s and was rejuvenated in early 2011. Robert Hale also published five novels in the last decade:
Stalking Widow (2000),
The Second Strain (2002),
Wrong Turnings (2004),
Hang Time (2007) and
The Merciless Dead (2008). Burke also wrote over twenty non-fiction titles, including several travel books for Batsford:
Suffolk (1971),
Sussex (1974),
English Villages (1975),
Czechoslovakia (1976),
Look Back on England (1980) and
The English Inn (1981). In 1985 he reached the semi-finals in TV's
Mastermind; his wife Jean also reached the semi-finals two years later. ==Bibliography==