Nick Pope

Author, journalist and TV personality, UFO-expert. Worked for the British Ministry of Defence for 21 years, where his duties included investigating reports of Unidentified Flying Objects.

The purpose of these investigations was to see whether anything reported might pose any threat to the defence of the United Kingdom, or suggest the existence of anything that might be of more general defence interest.  Most sightings turned out to be misidentifications of ordinary objects or phenomena, but a small percentage remained unexplained.  Contrary to popular belief, there was no evidence to suggest that any of these sightings were extraterrestrial in origin. Nick Pope was initially sceptical about UFOs, but his official research and investigation convinced him that whatever the nature of the sightings that remained unexplained, the UFO phenomenon raised important defence, national security and air safety issues.  He was particularly interested in cases where the witnesses were pilots, or where UFOs were tracked on radar.  More recently, Nick Pope has been involved in the programme to declassify and release the MoD's UFO files and send them to the National Archives.  This involved selecting some cases that would be of interest to the media, making a film to promote the release and giving newspaper, TV and radio interviews to publicise the story.

Nick Pope left the Ministry of Defence in 2006.  He now works as a freelance journalist and media commentator, writing and broadcasting on a wide range of subjects, including UFOs and the unexplained, conspiracy theories, fringe science, space and science fiction.  Nick Pope works with a wide range of TV networks and production companies, helping develop ideas for new documentaries.  He contributes regularly to various news programmes, chat shows and documentaries.  He promoting sci-fi films and advertising campaigns themed around the unexplained.  He has worked for clients that include Microsoft, 20th Century Fox and Sony Pictures and has been involved in promoting The X-Files: I Want To Believe and the remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still. Nick Pope lectures all around the world and this has included addressing the Oxford Union and speaking at the Science Museum and the Royal Albert Hall.

Nick Pope has written four books, all of which have been published by Simon & Schuster.  His non-fiction books are Open Skies Closed Minds, about UFOs, and The Uninvited, about the alien abduction mystery. Both books made the Top Ten in the Sunday Times list of hardback non-fiction books, with Open Skies Closed Minds reaching number three and staying in the Top Ten for ten weeks. These books have been translated into various foreign languages.  Nick Pope has also written two science fiction novels about an alien invasion, Operation Thunder Child and Operation Lightning Strike. There have been discussions about producing a film or a TV miniseries based on these books. Nick Pope lives in London.