The Complete Book of UFOs

About the Author

Jenny Randles is a prolific British UFO author who served as BUFORA's director of investigations from 1982 to 1994 and has published more than 50 books across UFO and paranormal subjects since the 1970s. Her investigative work includes the 2000s re-investigation of the Lakenheath–Bentwaters incident alongside David Clarke, Andy Roberts, and Martin Shough, publishing Margaret Fry's findings on the 1974 Berwyn Mountains Incident, and documenting the 1957 West Freugh radar case. As a BUFORA investigator, she was also among the researchers who examined the March 1993 Cosford Incident and floated the rocket-body re-entry explanation later confirmed by Gary Anthony's trajectory analysis.

Peter Hough is a British ufologist and psychology graduate whose academic background included published research with Dr. Paul Rogers on the psychology of alleged alien-abduction experiencers, appearing in the peer-reviewed journal Imagination, Cognition and Personality. With Randles as his longtime writing partner, he led the investigation into the December 1987 Ilkley Moor Incident directly — arranging the Kodak and British Journal of Photography analyses of the case's central photograph, having the witness's anomalous compass examined at Manchester University, and ultimately receiving copyright of the photograph from the witness himself.

The two co-authors also wrote World's Best "True" UFO Stories (1994), which contains their own chapter-length account of the Ilkley Moor case, meaning this book represents at least the second collaboration between the pair to touch on that specific investigation, reflecting the closeness between their formal case-file work and their broader published survey writing.

Historical Context & Origins

The book's title frames its scope explicitly around "50 years" of UFO reporting, positioning it as a retrospective published roughly five decades after the modern UFO era's conventional starting point in the late 1940s. By 1997, both authors had already accumulated substantial direct field-investigation experience of their own — Hough's Ilkley Moor work a decade earlier, Randles's long BUFORA tenure — giving the survey a foundation in firsthand casework rather than purely secondary compilation.

This edition, published by Piatkus Books with the specific subtitle "50 Years of Alien Contacts and Encounters," represents a revised version of the authors' earlier work: an initial Piatkus edition appeared in 1993, followed by a 1994 edition subtitled "An Investigation into Alien Contacts and Encounters," before this 1997 revision. That publication history reflects a book that evolved across multiple editions over several years rather than a single fixed text, consistent with a reference work meant to be periodically updated as new cases and developments emerged.

The book's broader survey format sits within a wider British ufological tradition of the period, in which experienced field investigators like Randles and Hough increasingly turned toward synthesizing decades of accumulated casework into single reference volumes for general readers — a role distinct from, but complementary to, their own more narrowly focused case-specific writing.

Core Arguments & Key Concepts

As a broad survey rather than an argument-driven monograph, the book's central approach is contextual: individual incidents, including the authors' own investigations, are presented within the wider pattern of fifty years of UFO reporting, allowing readers to judge specific cases against a much larger evidentiary backdrop rather than in isolation.

A recurring theme, consistent with both authors' broader published work, is that individual British cases deserve to be understood within the country's own distinct ufological history and institutional context (BUFORA investigations, established local researchers, region-specific patterns) rather than folded indiscriminately into a generic international UFO narrative.

A third theme, reflected in the authors' methodological seriousness elsewhere — Hough's own forensic photograph and compass analysis at Ilkley Moor, Randles's rocket-body identification work at Cosford — is an implicit commitment to applying conventional-explanation testing before accepting a case as genuinely unexplained, an approach this site's own research treats as a useful editorial model.

Key Cases & Evidence Discussed

The Todmorden Police Encounter (1980) involved on-duty police officer Alan Godfrey, who encountered a disc-shaped object blocking a road in Todmorden, England, experienced apparent lost time, and later described an abduction under hypnosis. This site's own case file cites this book as "a broader survey by two of British ufology's most prominent investigators... situating Todmorden within the wider history of British UFO investigation" — the same Peter Hough who later personally investigated the Ilkley Moor case discussed below.

The Ilkley Moor Incident (December 1987) at Ilkley Moor, West Yorkshire, involved witness Philip Spencer's photograph of a small humanoid figure, subjected to Kodak and British Journal of Photography analysis arranged personally by co-author Hough, alongside examination of the witness's anomalous compass at Manchester University. This site's own case file cites this book directly as "the same investigating pair's broader reference work, useful for placing the Ilkley Moor case in the context of the wider British UFO cases they covered across their careers" — a citation carrying particular weight given that Hough was not a secondary commentator on this case but its lead investigator.

Critical Reception & Controversies

On Goodreads, the book carries a middling 3.13-out-of-5 average from 30 ratings (checked August 2026), with a rating distribution skewed toward the middle: 43% of readers gave it three stars, with roughly equal splits between higher (32% at four or five stars) and lower (23% at one or two stars) ratings. The sole detailed review available notes that the book "will serve as an introduction to the topic" while falling short of being the fully comprehensive resource its title promises — a reasonable characterization of a general-audience survey covering fifty years of material within a single volume.

This site's research attempted to verify an Amazon rating for this title but Amazon's bot-detection system repeatedly blocked automated requests to the listing during this session, returning a CAPTCHA challenge across multiple attempts. Per this site's own Amazon Rating Display Protocol, this gap is disclosed honestly here rather than fabricated or silently omitted.

As a broad-survey reference work covering an enormous span of material, the book's inherent limitation is depth: readers seeking the kind of forensic detail Hough personally brought to the Ilkley Moor investigation, or Randles brought to the Cosford rocket-body identification, will find those specific cases treated at survey length here rather than with the full case-file rigor available in the authors' more dedicated writing and in this site's own case files.

Influence & Legacy

The book's clearest documented value on this site specifically is as a cross-reference point linking two of the authors' own separately investigated British cases — Todmorden and Ilkley Moor — within a single unified survey, letting readers situate either case against the other and against the broader fifty-year pattern the book covers.

The book's multi-edition publication history (1993, 1994, and this 1997 revision) reflects a sustained, multi-year effort by both authors to keep a general reference work current with an evolving field, a form of ongoing editorial maintenance distinct from a single fixed-point monograph.

Within this site's own essential-reading library, this book joins Randles's other documented works — The UFOs That Never Were and The Complete Book of Aliens and Abductions — reflecting her position as one of the most extensively covered British authors in this catalogue, while also marking Peter Hough's first dedicated essential-reading entry despite his direct, hands-on role in one of this site's own most photographically documented British cases.

The Book

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