Thomas, Hugh
Entry updated 31 July 2023. Tagged: Author.
(1931-2017) UK historian and author, best known for such studies as The Spanish Civil War (1961; rev 1977). Of his fiction, which came early in his career, his second novel, The Oxygen Age (1958), is of sf interest. In the very Near Future, the British government is convinced by Lord Mortlake, an industrialist and fraudster, that he is responsible for the Invention of the oxygen bomb, and that with it Britain will be able to dominate the world. The tale, mildly Satirical and spoofish, ends in the exposure of the fraud and the demolition of the Moon by the Russians. Thomas was ennobled in 1981 as a Life Peer. [JC]
Hugh Swynnerton Thomas, Lord Thomas of Swynnerton
born Windsor, Berkshire: 21 October 1931
died 7 May 2017
works (highly selected)
- The Oxygen Age (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1958) [hb/Phillippe Jullian]
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