Michael White
Member of the Thompson Twins who became a bestselling writer of biographies and thrillers
MICHAEL WHITE, who has died aged 58, became a bestselling author of biographies, books of popular science and thrillers after a brief period as a member in the early 1980s of the Thompson Twins, a “New Romantic” pop group notable for their big hair and for the fact that there were more than two of them.
The biography on White’s website claims that he was the only person to appear in three Top 10 charts – as a musician, a novelist and a non-fiction writer.
Michael White was born in Southend on February 16 1959, one of six children of a small businessman whose interior decoration business periodically went bankrupt because of his addiction to gambling. As a result the family moved about 12 times during Michael’s childhood.
From the age of 16, first at Thorpe Hall school, Southend, then at King’s College, London, where he read Chemistry, White was involved in student pop bands with a girlfriend. In 1982, as Colour-me-pop, they had a minor hit with When Sex Was Fun, which reached No 98 in the charts and No 2 in the Indie charts.
As a result they were invited to support an up-and-coming group called the Thompson Twins on a world tour, and White was asked to join the band as a guitarist during the recording of their first hit album Quick Step and Side Kick.
He had his 1930s-era haircut restyled into a “Thompson Twins special” – shaved sides, dyed black around the ears, spiky and bright orange on top – but his membership of the band was short-lived, ending when his girlfriend left him for someone else. Back in Britain White moved into an Oxford bedsit and signed on for the dole.
In 1985 he became a science teacher at d’overbroeck’s College, an independent sixth form college in Oxford. He ended up being the head of the chemistry department and head of studies. At the same time he embarked on a parallel career as a writer.
An interview with the BBC led to some freelance scriptwriting, newspaper journalism and then a post as science editor at GQ magazine. Towards the end of the 1980s he got an idea to write a biography of Stephen Hawking and, together with John Gribbin, an established science writer, he published Stephen Hawking: A Life in Science (1992) which went on to become the No 1 bestseller in Britain and was translated into 20 languages. White soon gave up teaching to be a full-time writer.
He went on to write 27 more non-fiction books, including biographies of Tolkein, Machiavelli, CS Lewis, Isaac Asimov, Darwin and Einstein (both with John Gribbin) and popular works on the science of Doctor Who and of The X-files.
His Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer, in which he explored Newton’s interest in alchemy and the occult, was nominated by four British newspapers as “book of the year” in 1997, though it caused some controversy with its contention that the great physicist’s exploits in alchemy inspired his scientific work.
White’s Leonardo: The First Scientist, was the fourth bestselling science book of 2000 in Britain and sold a million worldwide. The Pope and the Heretic (2002) told the story of Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), a Dominican friar who became a travelling teacher and writer before being tried and executed for heresy. The same year Rivals, a history of scientific rivalry from Newton to Bill Gates, was shortlisted for the Aventis Prize.
Despite his success with non-fiction, White had always wanted to be a novelist. He tried his luck with six novels, all of which were turned down by publishers, before striking gold in 2007 with his seventh, Equinox, a murder mystery which he described as “a cross between The X-files and Inspector Morse”.
The book inspired a bidding war among European publishers at the 2005 Frankfurt book fair. By the time Random House snapped up the UK rights, some 28 countries had forked out record sums for it, swelling the total advance to more than $1 million.
Equinox became an international bestseller, as did his second novel, The Medici Secret, inspired by the digging up of mummified remains in the Medici Chapel in Florence. White’s other novels included The Borgia Ring; The Art of Murder and The Kennedy Conspiracy. He also wrote under the pseudonyms Tom West and Sam Fisher.
In 2002 White emigrated from Britain (on a “distinguished talent” visa) to Australia, for its “sunshine, beautiful beaches and athletes [who] win things”, eventually settling in Perth.
There, in addition to writing, he joined a local television show Can We Help? answering questions from the public on such issues as “Why did the apple hit Newton’s head?”. He was made an honorary research fellow at Curtin University, Perth, held writing courses as “The Book Guru” and taught at the University of Western Australia.
White died a few days before submitting his PHD, which he was doing at the University of Western Australia. He is survived by his wife, Lisa, and by a daughter and three sons.
Michael White, born February 16 1959, died February 6 2018