Charles Whiting

Charles Henry Whiting (18 December 1926 – 24 July 2007^[1]), was a British writer and military historian and with some 350 books of fiction and non-fiction to his credit, under his own name and a variety of pseudonyms including Duncan Harding,^[2] Ian Harding,^[3] John Kerrigan,^[4] Leo Kessler,^[5] Klaus Konrad,^[6] K.N. Kostov,^[3] and Duncan Stirling.^[3]

Early life and education

Born in the

Next, he published Journey to No End,[8] followed by The Mighty Fallen (1958).^[9]

In 1967, he began writing non-fiction books for the New York publisher Ian Ballantine. Whiting continued this work even when producing novels.^[3]

After these three novels, he put his literary career on hold. After gaining his degree, he worked in a variety of fields in Europe and the United States. He taught as an assistant professor of History at Maryland and Bradford universities before returning to Germany with a post at Trier in 1958. He also lectured at Saarbrücken and Bielefeld before returning to Britain in 1973.^[3] Elsewhere, Whiting worked as a translator for a German chemical factory, in spells as a publicist, as a correspondent for The Times, and as a feature writer and German correspondent for such diverse periodicals as Education Forum and The Times Literary Supplement (for both of which he was a German correspondent^[3]), International Review of Linguistics, Soldier Magazine, and Playboy.^{[citation needed]}

Whiting became a touring academic living in Spain, France, Germany, Turkey, and Italy while teaching military history and strategy to the US Army. It was while doing this he would meet his first wife, Irma, whose father had suffered persecution in Hamburg for his opposition to the Nazis, and eventually the couple settled in a remote Belgian village.^{[citation needed]}

It was while living there that Whiting began to compose novels and non-fiction at a high rate, initially overwhelming his publishers.^{[citation needed]} Between 1970 and 1976, in a prolific burst, he wrote a total of 34 books which he described as "Bang-bang, thrills-and-spills".^{[citation needed]}

It was to deal with his work rate that publishers developed a number of different markets for his output, who publishing his work under his own name as well as the names Duncan Harding, John Kerrigan, and Klaus Konrad and, at the suggestion of publisher Anthony Cheetham, his most successful nom de plume, Leo Kessler,^[3] whose annual sales would reach 60,000 copies during the 1980s.^{[citation needed]}

From 1976, he was a full-time author and would average some six novels a year for the rest of his life.

In addition to writing his novels, his weekly educational columns and dealing with his lecturing commitments, he also established a language centre in the German city of

His final novel, written as Leo Kessler, is now available as an ebook titled Some Desperate Glory.[10]

One of his most famous books of non-fiction is York Blitz, 1942 (also published as Fire Over York), about the German bombing of York in April 1942,^{[citation needed]} while his most controversial is Hemingway Goes To War, about the misadventures of the writer Ernest Hemingway during World War II.^{[citation needed]} The latter was republished in 2008 by Humdrumming Ltd, which is also republishing some early Leo Kessler titles, kicking off with Fire Over Kabul, as well as his very first novel, The Frat Wagon.^[11]

Selected publications

• Whiting, Charles (1954). The Frat Wagon. Jonathan Cape.
• Kessler, Leo (1976). Forced March. Futura Publications.
  OCLC 877327692
  .
• Whiting, Charles (1976). Bloody Aachen. Stein and Day.
  OCLC 2188959
  .
• Whiting, Charles (1976). The Spymasters: The True Story of Anglo-American Intelligence Operations Within Nazi Germany, 1939–1945. Saturday Review Press.
  OCLC 2015475
  . Originally published as The Battle for Twelveland.
• Taylor, Eric; Kessler, Leo (1986). York Blitz, 1942: the Baedeker räid on York, April 29th, 1942. William Sessions.
  OCLC 15283447
  .
• Whiting, Charles (1999). Hemingway Goes To War. Sutton Pub.
  OCLC 41664272
  . Originally, published in 1990 by Crowood Press under the title: Papa Goes to War.

Whiting married Gillian Tidmus in 2005.[3]

Death

Whiting died 24 July 2007 in York, aged 80, from renal failure. His wife Gillian Tidmus and son, Julian, survive him.^[3]

When Whiting died, "he was one of the leading figures of the British paperback industry and its 1970s boom in novels drenched in violence and sex."^[3][12]

References