English writer was noted Billy the Kid historian

Jun. 23—Some called Frederick Nolan the Godfather of Billy the Kid history books.

The English writer had a personal and professional background that was as far away as the notorious New Mexico outlaw's life as day is from night.

But he formed a connection to the Kid through another Englishman — John Henry Tunstall, one of the major players in the Lincoln County War.

It was Nolan's 1950s biography of Tunstall that drew Nolan into the world of New Mexico, Lincoln County and Billy the Kid for decades. Many Billy the Kid scholars consider Nolan the ultimate historian on the subject.

Nolan died June 15 in Chalfont St. Giles, England, of natural causes. He was 91. His son, Andre Nolan, said by phone from London his father "loved New Mexico, its rich history, its very beautiful landscape and of course it's very kind and generous people."

Over the years Nolan published a number of books related to Billy the Kid, including The West of Billy the Kid and The Lincoln County Wars: A Documentary History. He often traveled to New Mexico to research and talk about those topics and became a regular fixture at Lincoln County historical gatherings and archeological digs.

"Certainly as a Billy the Kid historian and Lincoln County War historian, Fred reigned supreme," said Albuquerque author and Billy the Kid historian Chuck Usmar. "He's the touchstone for scholarship."

In his preface to The West of Billy the Kid, Nolan said he was inspired to research the Kid's life after being introduced to newspaper writer Walter Noble Burns' book on the outlaw, who was killed in Lincoln County in July 1871.

Nolan wrote Billy the Kid "was a real human being" and one who deserved closer, in-depth examination than many books and movies had given him.

Painting Billy as an "intelligent boy with an impish sense of humor" who nonetheless had a "dark and vengeful streak in his nature," Nolan wrote he wanted to depict the person beneath the image. He sought to describe "the young man as he (sometimes) saw himself and the young man his friends and enemies (sometimes) saw."

"Not groundbreaking scholarship, but a sensible summary of a small-time criminal whose short, violent life became fodder for American myth," Kirkus Reviews wrote of the book.

Nolan was born on March 7, 1931, in Liverpool, England. Usmar, who befriended Nolan, said he spent World War II living with families outside the big English cities that were under constant threat of bombing. Nolan told Usmar he attended the University of Liverpool, though Andre Nolan said his father only completed about a year of college.

In a mini-biography of Nolan's life published in Alexander Tulloch's The Little Book of Liverpool, the author writes Nolan was determined from a young age to be a writer "but it took him the best part of thirty years to actually get round to doing anything about it."

In the interim, Nolan worked as a typewriter salesman, an editor, a shipping clerk and "even as one of those people who decorate chocolates on a conveyer belt before they get put into little boxes," Tulloch wrote.

Sometime in the 1950s Nolan got the idea to search through London telephone books for anyone named Tunstall to see if he could find any living relatives of the English rancher whose death helped set off the Lincoln County War of the late 1870s.

According to a 2000 Associated Press story, Nolan found John Tunstall's sister, Mabel, then in her mid-80s, "who had her brother's documents, diaries and voluminous correspondence."

Still, following the publication of Nolan's biography of Tunstall, the author spent years working as an editor and writing fiction books under a number of pen names.

Nolan, a theater enthusiast, also found time to write a biography of American composers Rodgers and Hammerstein. Nolan's friends said if there was a piano within sight, he would take charge of it and play renowned Broadway tunes.

"He loved the American theater and Broadway and Rodgers and Hammerstein," said Roy Young, editor of the Wild West History Association Journal. "He loved to crank out those old Broadway tunes — and did a pretty good job of it."

Jeremy Jordan, a Lincoln County resident who befriended Nolan in the 1980s, said Nolan was a compelling storyteller who could hold an audience "spellbound" whether he was talking about New Mexico history or an event from his own childhood.

Jordan said when it came to Billy the Kid, Nolan was a "serious, dedicated historian and he wanted to find out what was going on ... but he never tried to put words in Billy's mouth like some authors do."

Nolan was often at his best when he presented a "just the facts" view of the participants of the Lincoln County War. He would often point out there is not enough documented information about those historical figures to confirm anecdotal stories about their background, motives or even deaths.

He also knew how to set his personal stories of those real-life characters within the context of their environment and times. The New York Times called The Lincoln County Wars: A Documentary History, an "admirably full and thoughtful treatment of the Lincoln County troubles, an account that not only demonstrates the confusion and limits of power in a fluid frontier environment but also captures the climate of violence that fed the myth of the Wild West."

Western historian Bob Boze Bell called Nolan the "unmovable mover in the Billy the Kid world." He said Nolan had a playful, curious nature about most things and was always striving to get to the truth — or at least raise enough questions about that truth — in his research and writing.

Recalling a road trip he took with Nolan along bumpy desert backroads in Arizona while visiting a historical site tied to Wyatt Earp some years back, Bell said Nolan, sitting up front in the truck as it roared along to nowhere, turned to him and said, "This is so amazing, we have nothing like this in Britain."

Besides his son Andre, Nolan is survived by his wife, Heidi.