wearysloth

Posted over at voyforums:


Peter Haining, author of `James Bond: A Celebration`, dies aged 67

Anthologist Peter Haining, born 1940, died from a heart attack on November 19, 2007, at the age of 67.

He is best known to 007 fans as the author of "James Bond: A Celebration" - one of the first books focussing on the cinematic series.

As well as his 1987 Bond book, he edited numerous fantasy and horror anthologies.

He began his career as a reporter in Essex and then moved to London where he worked on a trade magazine before joining the publishing house of New English Library. Peter achieved the position of Editorial Director before becoming a full time writer in the early Seventies. He edited a large number of anthologies, predominantly of horror and fantasy short stories, wrote non-fiction books on a variety of topics from the Channel Tunnel to Sweeney Todd and also used the pen names "Ric Alexander" and "Richard Peyton" on a number of crime story anthologies. In the Seventies he wrote three novels, including The Hero (1973), which was optioned for filming.

He wrote several reference books on Doctor Who, including the 21st anniversary special Doctor Who: A Celebration Two Decades Through Time and Space (1983), and also wrote the definitive study of Sherlock Holmes on the screen, The Television Sherlock Holmes (1991) and several other television tie-ins featuring famous literary characters, including Maigret and Poirot. Peter Haining's most recent project was a series of World War Two stories based on extensive research and personal interviews: The Jail That Went To Sea (2003), The Mystery of Rommel's Gold (2004), Where The Eagle Landed (2004), The Chianti Raiders (2005) and The Banzai Hunters (2007).

He won the British Fantasy Awards Karl Edward Wagner Award in 2001.

*****************************

Here is a list of Peter Haining's books:


Novels
The Hero (1973) (with Terry Harknett)
The Savage (1986)


Series contributed to
Doctor Who
Doctor Who : A Celebration; Two Decades Through Time and Space (1983)
The Key to Time : A Year by Year Record (1984)
The Doctor Who File (1986)
The Time-Travellers Guide (1987)
The Nine Lives of Doctor Who (1999)


James Bond
James Bond: A Celebration (1987)


The Mammoth Book of ...
The Mammoth Book of Armchair Detectives and Screen Crimes (1998)
The Mammoth Book of Twentieth-Century Ghost Stories (1998)
The Mammoth Book of Haunted House Stories (2000)
The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories (2007)


Anthologies edited
Everyman's Book of Classic Horror Stories (1965)
The Hell of Mirrors (1965)
Beyond the Curtain of Dark (1966)
The Craft of Terror (1966)
Where Nightmares Are (1966)
Guaranteed Rest in Peace: And Other Macabre Tales (1966)
Gentlewomen of Evil: An Anthology of Rare Supernatural Stories from the Pens of Victorian Ladies (1967)
Anyone for Murder?: And Other Tales of Crime (1967)
This Day's Evil (1967)
Dr. Caligari's Black Book (1968)
The Evil People (1968)
The Future Makers (1968)
The Midnight Penthouse (1968)
The Midnight People (1968)
Legends for the Dark (1968)
The Witchcraft Reader (1969)
The Satanists (1969)
The Unspeakable People (1969)
The Hollywood Nightmare (1970)
The Freak Show (1970)
A Circle of Witches: An Anthology of Victorian Witchcraft Stories (1971)
The Wild Night Company (1971)
The Necromancers (1971)
The Clans of Darkness: Scottish Stories of Fantasy and Horror (1971)
The Ghouls Book 2 (1971)
The Ghouls Book 1 (1971)
Detours Into The Macabre (1972)
The Dream Machines (1972)
The Magicians: The Occult in Fact and Fiction (1972)
Nightfrights (1972)
Great British Tales of Terror: Gothic Stories of Horror and Romance 1765-1840 (1972)
Lucifer Society (1972)
Great Tales of Terror from Europe and America Volume 2 (1972)
Summoned from the Tomb (1973)
Gothic Tales of Terror (1973)
The Nightmare Reader (1973)
The Nightmare Reader Volume 1 (1973)
The Nightmare Reader Volume 2 (1973)
The Ghouls (1974)
Christopher Lee's New Chamber of Horrors (1974)
More of Christopher Lee's New Chamber of Horrors (1974)
The Magic Valley Travellers: Welsh Stories of Fantasy and Horror (1974)
The Ghost's Companion (1975)
The Fantastic Pulps (1975)
The Penny Dreadful: or Strange Horrid and Sensational Tales (1975)
The Black Magic Omnibus Volume 2 (1976)
The Black Magic Omnibus Volume 1 (1976)
Tales of Unknown Horror (1976)
Weird Tales Volume 2 (1976)
Frankenstein File (1977)
Deadly Nightshade (1978)
More Weird Tales (1978)
Irish Leprechaun's Kingdom (1979)
The Shilling Shockers (1979)
More Tales of Unknown Horror (1979)
The Leprechaun's Kingdom (1979)
Buried Passions (1980)
The Final Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1981)
Vampire Terror and Other Stories (1981)
Book of Ghost Stories (1983)
Zombie (1985)
The Ghost Ship: Stories of the Phantom 'Flying Dutchman' (1985)
Tales of Dungeons and Dragons (1986)
Dead of Night (1986)
The Television Sherlock Holmes (1986)
The Dracula Centenary Book (1987)
Werewolf: Horror Stories of the Man Beast (1987)
LBW - Laughter Before Wicket: 100 Years of Humorous Cricket Short Stories (1987)
Poltergeist: Tales of Deadly Ghosts (1987)
Movie Monsters: Great Horror Film Stories (1988)
Scottish Stories of Fantasy and Horror (1988)
Doctor Who : 25 Glorious Years (1988)
Mummy Stories of the Living Corpse (1988)
Irish Tales of Terror: Twenty-Two Bewitching Tales of Irish Mystery and Magic (1988)
Hook, Line and Laughter: A Haul of 18 Humorous Fishing Stories (1989)
Stories of the Walking Dead (1990)
Murder On the Menu: A Gourmet Guide to Death (1991)
The Armchair Detective: Great Tales of Crime and Detection (1992)
The Television Detectives' Omnibus (1992)
Great Irish Stories of the Supernatural (1992)
Great Tales of Horror (1993)
Vampires at Midnight (1993)
Masters of the Macabre (1993)
TV Late Night Horror Omnibus (1993)
The Armchair Horror Collection (1994)
The Flesh Eaters (1994)
The Frankenstein Omnibus (1994)
On Call with Doctor Finlay (1994)
Great Tales of Crime and Detection (1994)
Peter Cushing's Monster Movies (1994)
Great Irish Tales of the Unimaginable (1994)
Murder by the Glass (1994)
The Television Crimebusters Omnibus (1994)
Armchair Horror Omnibus (1994)
Great Irish Tales of Horror (1995)
Space Movies: Classic Science Fiction Films (1995)
Tales from the Gothic Bluebooks (1995)
The Vampire Omnibus (1995)
Murder at the Races (1995)
Ghost Movies: Famous Supernatural Films (1995)
Tales from the Rogues' Gallery (1996)
London After Midnight (1996)
Space Movies II (1996)
The Wizards of Odd: Comic Tales of Fantasy (1996)
Ghost Movies II (1996)
Murder on the Railways (1996)
The Vampire Hunters' Casebook (1996)
On the Case with Agatha Christie's "Poirot" (1996)
Pulp Frictions (1996)
Great Irish Tales Of Fantasy And Myth (1996)
Cyber-Killers (1997) (writing as Ric Alexander)
The Flying Sorcerers (1997)
Timescapes (1997)
Classic Science Fiction (1998)
Classic Westerns (1998)
Classics of the Supernatural (1998)
Scary!: Stories That Will Make You Scream (1998)
Great Irish Humorous Stories: An Anthology of Laughter and Wit (1998)
The Unexplained: Stories of the Paranormal (1998) (writing as Ric Alexander)
Knights of Madness: Further Comic Tales of Fantasy (1998)
Great Irish Stories of Murder and Mystery (1999)
Vintage Science Fiction (1999)
Great Irish Tales of Fantasy (1999)
Laws and Disorders (1999)
Great Welsh Fantasy Stories (2001)
Great Irish Drinking Stories (2002)
Scary!: More Stories to Make You Scream!: Vol 2 (2002)
Magician's Circle: More Spellbinding Stories of Wizards and Wizardry (2003)
The Wizard's Den: Spellbinding Tales of Magic and Magicians (2003)
Scottish Ghost Stories (2004)
The Mysterious Novice: Tales of Terror from the Gothic Bluebooks (2007)

Non fiction series
Invasion Earth
The Invasion: Earth Companion (1998)

Non fiction
A Thousand Afternoons (1970)
Witchcraft and Black Magic (1971)
Anatomy of Witchcraft (1972)
The unexpurgated 'Penthouse' (1972)
Warlock's Book: Secrets of Black Magic from the Ancient Grimoires (1972)
The Channel Islands (1972)
The Marlock's Book (1973)
The Graveyard Wit: The Humour of the Tombstone (1973)
The Monster Makers (1974)
Witchcraft Papers (1974)
Fortune Hunter's Guide (1975)
The Compleat Birdman: An Illustrated History of Man-powered Flight (1976)
An Illustrated History of Witchcraft (1976)
The Monster Trap and Other True Mysteries (1976)
The Great English Earthquake (1976)
Terror!: History of Horror Illustrations from the Pulp Magazines (1976)
The Ancient Mysteries (1977)
The Edgar Allan Poe Scrapbook (1977) (see Edgar Allan Poe)
Mystery!: An Illustrated History of Crime and Detective Fiction (1977)
The Art of Mystery and Detective Stories: The Best Illustrations from Over a Century of Crime Fiction (1977)
The Legend and Bizarre Crimes of Spring Heeled Jack (1977)
A Sherlock Holmes Compendium (1978) (see Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
The Restless Bones: And Other True Mysteries (1978)
The H. G. Wells Scrapbook: Articles, Essays, Letters, Anecdotes, Illustrations, Photographs, and Memorabilia About the Prophetic Genius of the Twentieth Century (1978) (see H G Wells)
Movable Books: An Illustrated History (1979)
The Screaming Skull and Other True Mysteries (1979)
Superstitions (1979)
Man Who Was Frankenstein (1979)
Mystery and Horrible Murders of Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1979)
Hell Hound and Other True Mysteries (1980)
Legend of Brigitte Bardot (1983)
The Legend of Charlie Chaplin (1983)
Traction Engine Companion (1983)
A Dictionary of Ghost Lore (1984)
Last Gentleman: Tribute to David Niven (1984)
Raquel Welch: Sex Symbol to Superstar (1984)
The Vampire Terror and Other True Mysteries (1984)
Pictorial History of Horror Stories (1985)
Goldie Hawn (1985)
Eyewitness to the Galaxy (1985)
For Mother with Love: Her Special Book (1986)
Race for Mars (1986)
The Art of Horror Stories: Two Hundred Years of Spine-chilling Illustrations (1986)
Sherlock Holmes Scrapbook (1987)
Ghosts: The Illustrated History (1987)
Elvis in Private: Unofficial Views of the King (1987)
Hole in Fun (1988)
The Scarecrow: Fact and Fable (1988)
Eurotunnel: An Illustrated History of the Channel Tunnel Scheme (1989)
The Spitfire Log: 50th Anniversary Tribute (1989)
Book of Learned Nonsense (1989)
Charlie Chaplin: A Centenary Celebration (1989)
Bob Hope: Thanks for the Memory (1989)
The Day War Broke Out: 3rd September 1939 (1989)
Spitfire Summer: The People's Eye-view of the Battle of Britain (1990)
The Legend of Garbo (1990)
Agatha Christie: Murder in Four Acts (1990) (see Agatha Christie)
The English Highwayman (1991)
Maria Marten (1992)
The Dracula Scrapbook (1992)
The Supernatural Coast: Unexplained Mysteries of East Anglia (1992)
Maigret (1993)
Sweeney Todd: The Real Story of the Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1993)
The Essential Seducer (1994)
On Duty with The Chief (1995)
Medics (1995)
Agatha Christie's Poirot: A Celebration of the Great Detective (1995) (see Agatha Christie)
The Orion Book of Murder: 100 of the World's Greatest Crime Stories (1996)
The Un-dead: the Legend of Bram Stoker and Dracula (1997) (with Peter Tremayne) (see Bram Stoker)
The MG Log (1998)
The Classic Era of the American Pulp Magazine (2000)
A Dictionary of Vampires (2000)
A Dictionary of Ghosts (2001)
The Classic Era of Crime Fiction (2002)
The Flying Bomb War: Contemporary Eyewitness Accounts of the German V1 and V2 Raids On Britain 1942-1945 (2002)
The Jail That Went to Sea (2003)
The Mystery of Rommel's Gold (2004)
Cat Compendium (2004)
A Slip of the Pen: The Writers' Book of Blunders (2004)
Where the Eagle Landed (2004)
The Chianti Raiders: The Extraordinary Story of the Italian Air Force in the Battle of Britain (2005)
Lassie: The Extraordinary Story of Eric Knight and 'the World's Favourite Dog' (2005)
Cannibal Killers: The Real Life Flesh Eaters and Blood Drinkers (2006)
The Banzai Hunters: The Forgotten Armada of Little Ships that Defeated the Japanese, 1944-5 (2006)

Anthologies containing stories by Peter Haining
The Vampire Hunters' Casebook (1996)
Dancing with the Dark (1997)
The Mammoth Book of Twentieth-Century Ghost Stories (1998)

Windthrop

V.sad to hear of this as have numerous books of his in my collection. Many are useful reference tools. A great enthusiast and archivist of popular arts.

smudge

Likewise here, so I too am sorry to hear of his passing.

Smudge

Welcome to my house. Enter freely, and of your own will...

destructive dandy

RIP Peter, he was a big help to a young Doctor Who fan with his mighty tomes back in the 80s

Windthrop

Here's a belated but never the less very welcome obit from todays Telegraph


Peter Haining

Peter Haining, who has died aged 67, was a prolific writer and editor of more than 130 anthologies on subjects ranging from crime to horror, witchcraft and fantasy.

In all, Haining produced more than 200 books, including what one critic acclaimed as "some of the best anthologies of fantasy and horror of our time".


Peter Haining: ‘I’ve always moved on from one thing to the next’


Haining became one of Britain's leading authorities on horror, and particularly on early Gothic and the classic English ghost story. In the 1970s, when 19th-century Gothic fiction was hard to find, Haining's compilations were often the only available source of such material for the general reader.

Hostile to the then ubiquitous Pan paperback series and its imitators, Haining favoured the subtle and the classic over the shocking and the graphic.

He also sought to broaden the repertoire of the anthology beyond the tales that turned up repeatedly, uncovering many hitherto obscure stories in the several thousand volumes that comprised his library at his 15th-century house in Suffolk, which was reputed to be haunted.

His crime output was no less compendious; he would usually produce two or three collections a year, with titles redolent of the golden age of detective fiction: Great Tales of Crime and Detection (1993), Tales of the Rogues' Gallery (1994), Murder at the Races (1995) and London After Midnight (1995) being a typical selection.

advertisement
As well as his collections of other people's writing, Haining wrote history and biographies of fictional historical characters such as Sweeney Todd and Spring-Heeled Jack. He wrote an early novel under his own name and produced several crime anthologies using the pseudonyms Ric Alexander and Richard Peyton.

Occasionally a critic detected in his prodigious output the triumph of scramble over scholarship: one of his biographies, The Legend of Greta Garbo (1990), was dismissed by Dirk Bogarde in The Daily Telegraph as "a perfectly respectable scissors and paste job".

Haining also published several reference books about the television series Doctor Who, notably Doctor Who: a Celebration; Two Decades in Time and Space (1983) and Doctor Who: the Key To Time, a Year-by-Year Record (1984).

Another area of Haining's expertise was the Sherlock Holmes oeuvre, of which he had an encyclopaedic knowledge; he edited A Sherlock Holmes Compendium (1980) and several further books on the detective.

Other film and television tie-ins featuring characters from literature included books on Maigret, Poirot and James Bond.

Eccentrically given to outrageous shirts and silly hats, Haining habitually clipped and tore items out of newspapers and magazines and filed them away, a magpie habit that yielded ideas for many of his books. "I've always moved on from one thing to the next," he once explained, "and the ideas just seem to keep on flowing.

I'm a writer for hire - that's what I've been doing for 30 years and that's what I enjoy doing."

Peter Alexander Haining was born on April 2 1940 at Enfield and educated at Buckhurst Hill county school.

He began writing while a schoolboy, having read the Sherlock Holmes books that inspired a lifelong interest in crime fiction, and was fascinated by imported gaudy American pulp magazines such as Weird Tales and Black Mask, providing, he later recalled, "armchair action and masturbatory ideals".

His interest in witchcraft was stirred as a young newspaper reporter on the West Essex Gazette at Loughton when he covered an outbreak of church desecration. Later he worked in Fleet Street on National Newsagent magazine as features editor before joining New English Library.

He became editorial director, but resigned in the early 1970s to become a full-time writer.

Finding the British horror genre wanting, he began producing anthologies of his own, introducing each piece with details about the author, in the belief that it gave the stories an extra richness.

While working on his horror collections, Haining was told by a book dealer about four boxes of cuttings and scrapbooks on Sherlock Holmes, the lifetime collection of a solicitor who had started it in about 1910. This became The Sherlock Holmes Scrapbook (1975), a pull-together of articles, clippings and illustrations supporting the myth of Conan Doyle's character.

The book prompted interest from Granada Television, which was making a series starring Jeremy Brett as Holmes, and Haining was invited to produce a book on the making of it, The Television Sherlock Holmes (1991).

In the historical field he edited The Penny Dreadful, or Strange Horrid and Sensational Tales (1975), and wrote The Legend and Bizarre Crimes of Spring-Heeled Jack (1978).

In The Man Who Was Frankenstein (1979), Haining suggested that Mary Shelley's inspiration might have been Andrew Crosse, a Somerset gentleman and amateur scientist who terrified his neighbours by using lightning as a source of power for electrical experiments.

Haining assembled 28 pieces on cricket by, among others, Trollope, Travers, Conan Doyle and John Arlott in LBW - Laughter Before Wicket (1986).

He followed this with The Scarecrow (1988), inspired by a letter to a newspaper asking whether the British scarecrow was extinct; Haining's survey ranged from its historical origins to Worzel Gummidge and Michael Foot.

Inspired by his father, who had served in the RAF, Haining's most recent project was a series of Second World War stories based on research and interviews: The Jail That Went To Sea (2003), The Mystery of Rommel's Gold, Where the Eagle Landed (both 2004), The Chianti Raiders (2005) and The Banzai Hunters (2007). In 1991 his Agatha Christie: Murder in Four Acts was nominated for an Edgar Allan Poe award by the Murder Writers of America.

In 2001 Haining won the British Fantasy Awards' Karl Edward Wagner prize.

Peter Haining, who died on November 19, married, in 1965, Philippa Waring, who survives him with their two sons and a daughter.

Thats the joke that killed the Music Hall !