For a period he worked as a journalist on the Norfolk Chronicle and then as a van driver and warehouseman at Hamerton's Stores in Dereham, taking his A-levels by private study at home and by correspondence courses.

Pseudonyms exclusive to Fanthorpe's short story output include Neil Balfort, Othello Baron, Noel Bertram, Oben Leterth, Elton T. Neef, Peter O'Flinn, René Rolant, Robin Tate, and Deutero Spartacus.

For example, Fanthorpe's 1960 novel Hand of Doom was written to suit a cover that had been produced to illustrate John Brunner's Slavers of Space, which formed one-half of Ace double D-421.

[20] Although generally based on situations and plots familiar from pulp fiction, the novels and stories also used academic and pseudo-academic facts to fill out their background, including the mythology of Ancient Egypt (The Eye of Karnak), Babylon (Unknown Destiny), India (Vengeance of Siva) and Greece (Negative Minus).

This latter novel has no connection with the famous film of the same title, but instead describes a vast interstellar chess game played by superhuman entities using human beings as pawns.

Other novels are pastiches of accepted works of the Western Canon – Beyond the Void is a loose rewrite of Shakespeare's play The Tempest, and in Negative Minus the characters Suessydo and Epolenep re-enact Homeric tales.

[21] So far, under this partnership, they have released the historical fiction titles The Joan of Arc Mysteries[22] and Garan of the Veneti,[23] in addition to multiple books in the 'Thoughts and Prayers' series.

[24] Alongside these are a collection of poems, Earth, Sea and Sky,[25] plus a children's book called Parables of the Pond,[26] the latter of which was published under the Auxillium Press imprint.