Douglas Thompson

Author, Broadcaster, International Journalist

Douglas Thompson is the author of many non-fiction books covering an eclectic mix of subjects from major Hollywood biographies to revelatory collaborations about remarkable people and events.

The author, broadcaster and international journalist, is a regular contributor to major newspapers and magazines worldwide.

In The Spotlight

Back from the Dead: The Untold Story
of the 7/7 Bombings

On the eve of the 20th anniversary of a day that changed Britain, comes the extraordinary, never-before-revealed story of 7/7’s most injured victim. A tale of heroism, success, failure, heartbreak, rage and redemption 

Dan Biddle was a construction site manager who was a 19-stone, 6ft 4in tall, semi-professional football goalkeeper, until he got on the second carriage of a Tube train at Liverpool Street station in 2005. 

On that day, July 7th, in a moment of someone else’s madness, he lost all meaning to his existence along with both his legs, his left eye, his spleen and all hearing in his left ear. 

His body and mind were devastated during the worst single terrorist atrocity on British soil. And for years living was a fate worse than death. 

It took ten seconds to disassemble him. It’s taken 20 years for him to find the inner peace and brutal honesty to reveal his daily battle and to go on surviving. 

Back From The Dead is Dan’s against-the-odds story and his tale of triumph and joy will astonish. His battle with bureaucracy and despair will anger and shock. The extraordinary love story that keeps him alive will inspire. 

In the past 15 years while dealing with his injuries he has become an advocate for the disabled and a vocal campaigner giving talks and presentations to Government and local authorities on what more can be done to help the physically disadvantaged. 

“They say cats have nine lives so I’ve been giving them a bit of a run. I’ve died three times on an operating table and had the same number of goes at killing myself. Luckily, the doctors were brilliant at saving my life and I was crap at ending it.” 

Mirror Books Managing Director Fergus McKenna said: “7/7 is a date that few British people will ever forget. But for Dan Biddle it wasn’t a far-away tragedy or even something that happened in his city, he was at the very epicentre of the attack. To come through and not only survive the physical injuries of that day but also the emotional scars is nothing short of incredible. To then use his own experience to help others shows just what a remarkable human being Dan really is.” 

Available Now

Reckless: Sex, Lies and JFK

Drawing on new interviews and previously hidden police and intelligence files, Reckless finally reveals the full corruption of America’s Camelot.

‘Reads like James Ellroy’– Daily Telegraph

‘JFK didn’t hesitate to employ deception, espionage and covert action’ – Timothy Naftali, Wall Street Journal

John F. Kennedy’s life is promoted by sentimental and careless myth-makers as pure legend. But a sinister shadow lies across it.

His death was such a shocking event that the vivid memory of his assassination still blinds us to much of what went before. When it is recalled, it is almost always seen through the prism of that single, terrible day in Dallas, obscuring the dark corners of his time and government.

For JFK, power was soundbites over policy, the White House a fairytale castle, and the President manifested as a hypersexualised movie star. As with Hollywood, the willing suspension of belief was required.

Reality imposes no such limits. 

Drawing on essential new material derived from decades-long investigations, Detective Mike Rothmiller and Douglas Thompson shatter the secrets and lies with a revelatory and dramatic true-life thriller focusing on JFK and Robert F. Kennedy, both before and after they bought the White House. 

All the usual suspects, from FBI titan J. Edgar Hoover and billionaire Howard Hughes to CIA rogue agents and Mob hitmen appear in a narrative which sweeps from wartime London to the salons of Washington, from the bedrooms of Hollywood to the torture chambers and jungles of central America, and on to revolutionary Cuba and the tragic, bloody political carousel of Vietnam.

Latest Release

Inside Out - The Extraordinary Legacy of April Ashley

Coming Soon in 2024

Prime Witness Cover
Prime Witness Cover 2

As seen on...

The legendary image of Christine Keeler

Christine Keeler’s son Seymour is campaigning to have his mother’s criminal conviction for perjury overturned. Details by clicking the link below.

Follow on X - @DOUGIE THOMPSON

Please join me in wishing Len Deighton a very happy birthday. He was born on this day in 1929!

What’s your favourite Deighton read?

Got to be Berlin Game for me.

#LenDeighton

So excited to read this advance copy of @paulvidich's THE POET'S GAME, about a #CIA spy uncovering a Russian plot on the US president. (& that cover!) Vidich is one of the top spy novelists writing today, in my opinion. Hits shelves 5/6/25. @AAKnopf

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About Douglas Thompson

Douglas Thompson is the author of many non-fiction books covering an eclectic mix of subjects from major Hollywood biographies to revelatory collaborations about remarkable people and events.

The author, broadcaster and international journalist, is a regular contributor to major newspapers and magazines worldwide.

Four of his books are at present being developed for global television.

Another is in preparation as a theatrical presentation.

His work, published in a dozen languages, include the television-based anthology Hollywood People, and best-selling biographies of Madonna, Clint Eastwood, Michelle Pfeiffer, Dudley Moore, Sharon Stone, John Travolta, Nicolas Cage and Leonardo DiCaprio.  He collaborated with the billion dollar  dancer Michael Flatley on his Sunday Times bestseller ‘Lord of the Dance’. 

With Christine Keeler, he wrote her revealing memoir The Truth At Last, an instant best-seller. He worked as a consultant on the tie-in television documentary on the Profumo Affair. In 2019 the book was revised as Secrets and Lies: The Trials of Christine Keeler and the audio version recorded by actress Sophie Cookson who plays Christine in the six-part BBC television series The Trials of Christine Keeler.

His three year collaboration with a landmark figure in the Muslim Brotherhood, Youssef Nada, was published in English to worldwide interest as ‘Inside the Muslim Brotherhood.’ The book, the first to give a balanced and inside view of the Muslim Brotherhood, arguably one of the most powerful political groups in the world, was a sensation when published in Arabic during the Arab Spring. It is now a source for scholars [The Muslim Brotherhood and the West, Martyn Frampton, Harvard University Press]. 

Working with eminent psychotherapist Pauline Sutcliffe, he told the poignant story of her brother Stuart, who named and helped found the Beatles with John Lennon.  His book ‘The Hustlers’, about gangsters and gambling in 1960s’ London, was the subject of a Channel 4 documentary. That work and  ‘Mafia Princess’, on which he worked with the title subject Marisa Merico, are two of the books being produced for television. His true crime book ‘Shadowland’ about an elaborate scheme about the American Mafia’s ‘invasion’ of Britain is another along with ‘The Dark Heart of Hollywood’ about how the Mob and the moguls cashed in at the movies.

Recent bestselling success included 2019’s ‘No Handcuffs’, a collaboration with the 1960s gangster Eddie Richardson now reformed as a collectable artist.

He is working with the German national television broadcaster ZDF on a documentary scheduled for 2020 and on two further books for publication then.

His DVD contributions to a celebration of Clint Eastwood’s career were recently commemorated in a special box set of Eastwood movies. He has been involved with many Hollywood stars on their memoirs.

Douglas Thompson, a director of one of Britain’s major literary festivals, divides his time between a medieval Suffolk village and California, where he was based as a Fleet Street correspondent and columnist for more than twenty years.