Clifford Thurlow trained as a journalist and wrote his first book at age 23. He has been described by Penny Wark of The Times as "one of the UK's best ghostwriters."
Thurlow studied Buddhism in India and worked with the Dalai Lama as one of a team translating Tibetan sacred texts into English. He traded gemstones in South East Asia and ran a travelling dolphin show in Spain before moving to Hollywood where he penned Carol White's autobiography Carol Comes Home.
Thurlow is noted for creating novelised-style true life memoirs. Two of his books were Sunday Times Top 10 best-sellers - Runaway (Simon & Schuster 2013), the story of Emily MacKenzie's life as a teenage prostitute; and Today I'm Alice (Sidgwick & Jackson 2009), Alice Jamieson's story of living with multiple personalities.
His latest book, Typhoon (Penguin, 2021) tells the story of Wing Commander Mike Sutton leading 1 Fighter Squadron on 300 death-defying missions over Syria in 2015 in the war against ISIS. ''Gripping, nerve-shredding, captivating, visceral, fascinating,' the Daily Mail.
Operation Jihadi Bride (Hachette, 2019), John Carney's covert mission to rescue young women from Isis, was released to a mass of TV and press publicity - 'Fascinating ... incredibly dangerous,' wrote Ben Machell in The Times. 'A true-life account with all the makings of a military thriller - the action unfolds like a le Carre novel, as co-author Clifford Thurlow brings Carney and a cast of colourful accomplices to life,' Soldier Magazine 'Book of the Month.'
Fatwa: Living With A Death Threat (Hodder & Stoughton 2005), describes the flight of Jacky Trevane across the desert with two children to escape an abusive husband - translated into 12 languages, a best-seller in Germany and France selling 500,000 copies worldwide.
His two books set in Iraq with former infantry captain James Ashcroft, are Escape From Baghdad (Virgin 2009), the rescue of Ashcroft's former Iraqi interpreter and his family from Shia Death Squads, W H Smith's Top Twenty; and Making A Killing (Virgin 2006) - on which Andy Martin wrote in The Daily Telegraph: "Ashcroft must have formed a good working alliance with ghostwriter Clifford Thurlow, because this diary of death and destruction radiates not just personality but that illusive, lyrical honesty the existentialists used to call authenticity.'
Thurlow is also the author of the acclaimed Sex, Surrealism, Dali and Me; the novel Cocaine Confidence and Making Short Films (Bloomsbury 2014) - 'The definitive must have for any filmmaker contemplating making and marketing a short film,' Elliot Grove, head of the Raindance Film Festival.
