John Biggins


John Biggins is a British writer of historical fiction. He is best known for his Prohaska series of novels set in the Austro-Hungarian Navy during the early years of the 20th Century.

Early life

Biggins was born in Bromley, Greater London, England. He attended Chepstow Secondary and Lydney Grammar Schools, and studied history at the University of Wales from 1968 to 1971. He continued his graduate studies in Poland.

Career

As a young man Biggins worked as a civil servant for the UK Ministry of Agriculture. He also worked as a journalist and did technical writing before becoming an author of historical fiction.
In 1991 the first of Biggins' Prohaska novels, A Sailor of Austria, was published by Secker & Warburg. The story is set in the Austro-Hungarian Navy during World War I, and vividly depicts life on board the primitive and dangerous U-boats of the period.
Kirkus Reviews reported the book to be well researched, but called it "bland and mundane". The Historical Novel Society, on the other hand, deemed it "Excellent military fiction", and similarly praised his later book Tomorrow The World.
In 2010 Biggins began a new series of novels, and self-published his most recent book, The Surgeon's Apprentice. This novel was included by The Spectator magazine on its "Books of the Year" list, described as a "soundly researched tale of sea-faring and warfare."
His previous books are now being distributed by McBooks Press.

The Prohaska series

Overview

Ottokar Prohaska, the fictional protagonist, is a Czech by birth, but an Austrian naval officer by avocation. His exploits have elements of both adventure and comedy. The historical background is the last years of the Austro-Hungarian empire, and in particular, in the case of two of the novels, World War I. The reader finds the hero/anti-hero, at different times, a gunnery officer aboard a ship, a submarine commander, and a member of the flying corps.