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Sean Thomas (writer)

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Sean Thomas
Sean Thomas, in 2012
Born1963 (age 60–61)[1]
Alma materUniversity College London
Occupation(s)Journalist, author

Sean Thomas is a British journalist and author. Born in Devon, England, and educated at University College London, he has written for publications such as The Times, the Daily Mail, The Spectator and The Guardian, mainly on travel, politics and art.[2][3] He has written about his troubled early life and multiple stepmothers.[4] His father was the writer and translator D. M. Thomas, who died in 2023.[5]

As a novelist, Sean Thomas uses multiple pseudonyms. As Tom Knox, he specialises in archaeological and religious thrillers. He has also published erotic fiction under the pseudonym A. J. Molloy. More recently, he has written novels under the pen name S. K. Tremayne.

Writing career

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Thomas's first Tom Knox thriller, The Genesis Secret, focuses on the Neolithic archaeological site known as Göbekli Tepe in Turkey, which Thomas visited as a journalist in 2006.[6] The book speculates on the genetic and sociological origins of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, with particular attention to the trait of sacrifice. Noteworthy for several exceptionally gruesome episodes, it was an international bestseller,[7][8][9] and has so far been translated into 21 languages.[10] The novel provoked controversy when the German Archaeology Institute complained that both a newspaper article and the book were based on "a falsified version of an interview with [chief archaeologist] Klaus Schmidt", which they argued constituted "a distortion of the scientific work of the German Archaeological Institute".[11] Thomas has since returned to the Göbekli Tepe site, and its new associated sites, the Taş Tepeler.[12]

His second Tom Knox thriller, The Marks of Cain was published in 2010. Centring on the Cagot community who lived in the Basque Country, and the troubled history of the German empire in Namibia, it too was an international bestseller. In Germany, the ebook version, published under the title Cagot, was notable for its experimental use of interactivity and alternate reality games.[13]

A third book, titled Bible of the Dead (or The Lost Goddess outside the United Kingdom) was published in March 2011 in the UK, and in the US in February 2012,[14] and focuses on the Khmer Rouge, while taking in the cave paintings of France, and modern Chinese Communism. More recently, Thomas has returned to Cambodia and written on the inspiration for this novel, when he attended the 2009 UN trial of Khmer Rouge apparatchik, Comrade Duch.[15]

In 2015, under the pseudonym S. K. Tremayne, Thomas published a novel called The Ice Twins, about a London couple who lose a child, one of identical twins, and thereafter move to a remote island in Scotland. The Ice Twins became a Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller in February 2015.[16]

The same novel, translated as IJstweeling, went into the Dutch top ten bestseller list, following its publication in the Netherlands in March 2015.[17] In May 2015, under the title Eisige Schwestern, the same book entered the Spiegel bestseller list, in Germany; the book went on to spend fifteen weeks in the German top ten.[18] In September 2015, The Ice Twins, in paperback form, became a number one Sunday Times bestseller in the UK.[19]

His second novel as S. K. Tremayne, The Fire Child, became a top ten bestseller in Germany in January 2017, under the title Stiefkind.[20]

In January 2019 The Ice Twins became a Nielsen Silver Award winner, for selling 250,000 copies in the UK.[21]

His novel Kissing England won the Literary Review's "Bad Sex" award in 2000, which is awarded for “the year's most outstandingly awful scene of sexual description in an otherwise good novel."[22][23]

Thomas's fourth book, Millions Of Women Are Waiting To Meet You,[24] was a memoir of his love life, it was a Guardian “book of the week” in 2007.[25]

Personal life

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Thomas has two children and lives in Camden Town, North London.[26]

In 1987 Thomas was acquitted at a trial at the Old Bailey of a rape charge brought by his then-girlfriend.[27][28] Thomas has written about his alcohol and drug addiction, especially heroin.[29][30] In 2003 he wrote an article in The Spectator about his problems with internet porn, and how it caused him to “wank myself into hospital”. The article is cited by psychiatrist Norman Doidge in his book The Brain That Changes Itself as a “remarkable account of a man’s descent into porn addiction”[31]

Bibliography

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Sean Thomas

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  • Absent Fathers (1996) ISBN 978-0-233-99003-3
  • Kissing England (2000) ISBN 978-0-00-226140-1
  • The Cheek Perforation Dance (2002) ISBN 978-0-00-651445-9
  • Millions of Women are Waiting to Meet You (2006) ISBN 978-0-7475-8556-5

As Tom Knox

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As A. J. Molloy

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As S. K. Tremayne

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References

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  1. ^ "Sean Thomas". HarperCollins. Retrieved 2 July 2024.
  2. ^ Thomas, Sean (10 October 2022). "What a greasy spoon in West London tells us about the threat of nuclear war". The Spectator. Retrieved 30 March 2023.
  3. ^ Thomas, Sean (22 December 2004). "This epic Earth". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 30 March 2023.
  4. ^ Thomas, Sean (8 December 2023). "Why the dying deserve illegal drugs". The Spectator. Retrieved 22 February 2024.
  5. ^ "DM Thomas obituary". The Times. 22 February 2024. ISSN 0140-0460. Retrieved 22 February 2024.
  6. ^ "Gobekli Tepe - Paradise Regained?". Fortean Times. March 2007. Archived from the original on 28 May 2007.
  7. ^ "Jade title reaches Number One | the Bookseller".
  8. ^ "Arundhati's new book tops bestseller - Hindustan Times". Archived from the original on 25 January 2013.
  9. ^ "vi. The Genesis Secret Thom Knox EQ12:1 (May 2009)".
  10. ^ "Tom Knox in the prehistoric temple". www.nationmultimedia.com. Archived from the original on 29 April 2010.
  11. ^ Eric H. Cline (October 2009). "The Distortion of Archaeology and What We Can Do About It: A Brief Note on Progress Made and Yet To Be Made". Bible Interp | News and Interpretations on the Bible and Ancient Near East History.
  12. ^ 2022
  13. ^ "Cagot von Tom Knox – mehr als ein eBook". 3 June 2011.
  14. ^ "Book review: The Lost Goddess, by Tom Knox | Dallas Morning News". Archived from the original on 6 January 2014.
  15. ^ Thomas, Sean (4 March 2023). "How we forgot about Pol Pot". The Spectator. Retrieved 30 March 2023.
  16. ^ "Top 20 Original Fiction 2015 6 | the Bookseller".
  17. ^ "Bestseller60: 11 nieuwe boeken in de lijst". boekblad.nl. 4 March 2015. Retrieved 26 May 2021.
  18. ^ "buchreport". buchreport.
  19. ^ HarperCollinsUK [@HarperCollinsUK] (22 September 2015). "Number one in paperback fiction: THE ICE TWINS by S.K. Tremayne!" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  20. ^ "Buchreport".
  21. ^ "2019 Awards". Nielsen Awards. Archived from the original on 1 August 2019. Retrieved 6 February 2019.
  22. ^ "Literary Review - For People Who Devour Books". Literary Review. 18 July 2024. Retrieved 18 July 2024.
  23. ^ "Author has bad sex day". BBC News. 30 November 2000. Retrieved 2 July 2024.
  24. ^ "Millions of Women are Waiting to Meet you, by Sean Thomas". Independent.co.uk. 23 October 2011.
  25. ^ Lezard, Nicholas (4 May 2007). "Click of the wrist". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 18 July 2024.
  26. ^ Thomas, Sean (26 September 2023). "The deep absurdity of HS2's diversity agenda". The Spectator. Archived from the original on 9 October 2023.
  27. ^ thomas, sean. "From bed to prison cell". The Times. ISSN 0140-0460. Retrieved 30 March 2023.
  28. ^ "BBC - Radio 4 - Woman's Hour -Rape and Consent". www.bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 30 March 2023.
  29. ^ "Smack and the society junkie: Sean Thomas on the aristocratic addicts". The Independent. 24 September 1994. Retrieved 30 March 2023.
  30. ^ Thomas, Sean (13 December 2023). "Ozempic has cured my alcoholism". The Spectator. Retrieved 22 February 2024.
  31. ^ The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science.
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