born June 26, 1931, Leicester, Leicestershire, Eng.
British writer.
Born into a working-class family, he initially thought of a career in science, then gravitated toward writing. At age 24 he published The Outsider (1957), a study of 20th-century alienation that had phenomenal success. His next book was dismissed as unoriginal or superficial, but Ritual in the Dark (1960) and Adrift in Soho (1961) helped repair his reputation. Many of his more than 70 books deal with the psychology of crime, the occult, human sexuality, and his own existential philosophy. Alien Dawn (1998) discusses the UFO phenomenon.