Raymond Leonard

Raymond Leonard: Scientist, Novelist, Poet or Latter-day Prophet

Raymond Leonard was born during an air-raid, in which his parent’s home was destroyed. As a hungry youth he devised many ways of helping the family budget, such as a Newspaper boy, or running a Fruit stall on bombed land. Having left school at 14, he went on to win a State Scholarship and then gained a Ph.D. After a Senior Industrial Career, he joined Manchester University, and founded his own department of Total Technology. This helped win the Queen’s Anniversary Prize, presented at Buckingham Palace. During his academic career he supervised numerous doctoral students, wrote over 200 research papers in science and engineering, and a textbook on Applied Technology. He also co-authored the book, 'How to Avoid The British Disease', which the then Prime minster, Margret Thatcher, referred to as being her 'Little Bible'.

Lifelong passions have been Science, Religion and The Future. These inspired a series of futuristic novels. When the 'Daily Express' was reviewing 'The Nostradamus Inheritance' it carried the headline, "Scientist Predicts The Day The World Will End". This caused widespread concern in the UK, and also helped the book hit the best seller lists, and even find translation into Japanese and Hindi. This public concern was heightened when Professor Leonard’s own predictions in 'The Nostradamus Inheritance' started to be chillingly fulfilled. Other predictions in subsequent novels, such as the immediate collapse of the Soviet Union, as forecast in 'Legacy of The Shroud', now titled 'The Jesus Clone', added to his growing reputation as a Latter-day Prophet. This futuristic image resulted in Professor Leonard giving the Cardinal Newman Lecture at Oxford University. Here the title was 'Reconciling Prophesy With Freewill'. The Old Library was filled to capacity for the presentation.

PERSONAL STATEMENT

What compelled an established scientist to become an expert on 'Nostradamus' or lecture widely on 'The Turin Shroud', then to create characters to populate the novel land between science and religion? The straight answer is a true fascination with each subject, bordering on obsession. Thus ‘The Nostradamus Inheritance’ posed the question: ~ could Nostradamus really predict the future by Astrology and, if so, could his theorems be put into a super-computer and let run . . . ? 'The Jesus Clone' pondered the outcome of cloning a baby from Christ’s blood on the Turin Shroud. In 'Omega the Almighty', the question is considered of our dying world building a colossal computer and obeying its commands. 'Spatel' (Space Hotel) was written as a bizarre murder mystery in Space. Then, in 'Mandalay', re-incarnation, Buddhist rituals, elephants, palaces and the world’s biggest ruby are blended across space and time.

The published novels met with pleasing success in both reviews and sales. City Life Magazine wrote: ~ "Raymond Leonard has woven facts from the prophesies of Nostradamus into a Novel of gripping readability and suspense. The Nostradamus Inheritance brilliantly blends sixteenth century mysticism with modern technology to chilling effect. Literally unputdownable". This acclaim was enhanced as the chilling predictions from both 'The Jesus Clone' and 'Nostradamus' soon became reality. Now the writer was labelled 'a latter-day prophet', or even 'the new Nostradamus'. But satisfying as novel writing was proving, my day-job, of running a large University department, won out. My novelist's pen was thus exchanged for a poet's quill.

The time-freedom of retirement finally arrived. Now the five novels have been duly revised for the moderately-priced, medium of Amazon/Kindle. There is also an Amazon/Kindle edition of the complete collection of his poems, entitled, 'Pearls Along the Path'. These bridge the, wrongly-perceived, divide between Science and Faith. They also give a vision of the world that awaits ourselves and our fragile Earth. The writer regards this poetry collection as being a work that ‘Providence Alone Has Inspired’