Flying Saucerers

About the Author

This site's own David Clarke key-figures entry documents him as an investigative journalist and Associate Professor at Sheffield Hallam University who has worked extensively with the UK National Archives on declassified MoD UFO files, authored The National Archives' own official UFO research guide in 2019, and helped recover and verify the Calvine photograph. He and Roberts previously co-authored The UFOs That Never Were (2000) and Out of the Shadows (2002) -- the research for the latter is what led Clarke to rediscover Sir Henry Tizard's 1950-51 Flying Saucer Working Party report, subsequently released to them by the MoD in 2001.

This site's own Andy Roberts key-figures entry documents his collaboration with Clarke, Martin Shough, and Jenny Randles on the 2000s re-investigation of the Lakenheath-Bentwaters incident, tracking down and interviewing the actual Venom aircrews decades after the event, and his solo book UFO Down? The Berwyn Mountain UFO Crash (2010). This book represents a natural extension of their shared case-debunking methodology into a broader historical and sociological register, examining British ufology's own institutional and cultural history rather than any single case.

Historical Context & Origins

This site's own Solway Firth Spaceman Photograph case file already documents, with precise sourcing, exactly where Clarke and Roberts's actual identification of the photograph's background figure came from: first published in the April 2012 issue of Fortean Times, then in a more pointed follow-up, "Solway Spaceman Solved?", in the magazine's September 2013 issue, with the conclusion restated by Clarke directly to the BBC on the photograph's fiftieth anniversary in May 2014. Their proposal -- that the figure was Templeton's own wife Annie, who stepped into frame unnoticed and was rendered white and featureless by strong backlighting, compounded by a camera viewfinder that displayed only about 70 percent of the actual captured frame -- postdates this 2007 book by five to seven years.

This article's own research confirms the book itself does not discuss the Solway Firth case at all; its documented scope runs from the 1952 Flying Saucer Club through the late 1970s ufology institutions, ending well before the specific 2012-2014 identification work this site's case file credits to the same two researchers. The book's relevance to that case file is therefore best understood as general scholarly grounding in Clarke and Roberts's documented approach and credibility as researchers, not as a source containing the case's own specific resolution.

Core Arguments & Key Concepts

The book's central argument treats British ufology as a genuine social movement worth serious historical study in its own right -- its organizations, its founding personalities, its internal schisms, and its opponents -- independent of whether any individual UFO claim within that movement holds up to scrutiny.

That sociological framing is consistent with Clarke and Roberts's broader body of work: rather than treating each case in isolation, they situate individual claims and the researchers who investigate them within the wider cultural and institutional history of the field, an approach that indirectly explains why a case like Solway Firth's 1964 photograph emerged from and was interpreted within a particular, already well-established British UFO subculture.

Key Cases & Evidence Discussed

This site's own Solway Firth Spaceman Photograph case file documents Clarke and Roberts's actual identification research in full, correctly attributing it to their 2012-2013 Fortean Times articles and Clarke's 2014 BBC interview rather than to this book. Readers wanting the complete, precisely sourced record of that identification should consult that case file directly.

This book's own substantive content instead covers the organizational history of British ufology -- the Flying Saucer Club, Desmond Leslie and George Adamski's international influence, Flying Saucer Review, the Aetherius Society, and BUFORA -- material this article was not able to connect to any single named case this site covers, consistent with its stated scope as a social history rather than a case catalogue.

Critical Reception & Controversies

As of this article's research (August 2026), the book received strongly positive endorsements from within the field: Fortean Times contributor Peter Brookesmith reportedly called it "the best book on the flying saucer phenomenon for 20 years, by the two most sane commentators on the subject," and UFO author Nick Redfern called it "one of the most important ufological contributions of the last few years" and "vital reading for anyone and everyone that has an interest in belief systems." This article located both quotes only in publisher and retailer descriptive copy rather than in the original review text, so they should be treated as likely accurate but not independently verified against primary sources.

Modern aggregate reader data is negligible: Goodreads shows only 7 ratings averaging 4.14/5 with no written reviews, too small a sample to draw meaningful conclusions from. This article found no academic-journal or mainstream-press review of the book.

Influence & Legacy

The book's legacy rests on its standing as a serious sociological treatment of British ufology by two of the field's most credentialed and respected researchers, extending their established case-debunking methodology into institutional and cultural history rather than any single incident.

Set alongside this site's own Solway Firth Spaceman Photograph case file, this book is best read as background on the researchers and the cultural moment their work belongs to, rather than as a source containing the case's own specific resolution -- which this site's own case file already documents came from Clarke and Roberts's later, separate 2012-2014 published research.

The Book

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