Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 100

More London Snippets

In 1900 the oldest man in London arrived. He was the mummy of King Mycerinus of the fourth dynasty, and having survived intact since 3633 BC he now lost a finger over the weekend – somebody nicked it. The British Museum has its darker side, and the flaneurs of London were happy to document the […]

London Snippets

Just as you sometimes watch old films for glimpses of a city as it was before, so I love reading old books about flaneurs in London, watching the city’s people and institutions and jotting down their thoughts. There are hundreds of these books and they’re very undervalued by sellers, probably because they can’t imagine who’d […]

Off Topic: The Weekly Round-Up

A new feature – often after a week of chatting to y’all there’s a little more that emerges from the conversation, so in the interests of keeping open the lines of communication I’m going to look back at the weekly subjects tackled. I’ll try to do it always on a Sunday. Middle Of The Road […]

The Middle Of The Middle Of The Road

Are out tastes becoming blander? Are we getting less adventurous? I happened to glance at the London Times’ arts section and found their weekly full-page ads for concerts. The breadth of imagination on display would fit through the eye of a needle. A grisly lineup of ‘Rule Britannia’, ‘Land of Hope and Glory’, fireworks, waltzes, very […]

Cleverdick Novels

Time for a round-up of what I’ve been reading and can recommend. I’m sure authors like to be thought of as smart and knowledgeable in book choices, but it would seem there’s a subset of reading we could term Cleverdick novels, partly because they’re about being clever for the sake of it, partly because I […]

‘The Italian Job’ As A Metaphor For Brexit

It’s not often Michel Caine is interrupted by a peacock, but he was last night. I was in Holland Park, London’s fanciest green area, picnicking with friends. The park has peacocks and open-air opera and people playing chess on a giant board like they did in ‘The Prisoner’, and David Beckham lives next door. We […]

Should Cities Limit Their Nightlife?

Parts of cities in the UK operate under ‘Controlled Drinking’ hours, with zones where you can’t walk about with bottles. A recent trip to Cardiff revealed two cities; one with rolling parkland, a beautiful castle, winding lanes and hip cafes, the other a booze-sodden avenue of bad cocktail bars and clubs pumping out competing sounds […]

Writing For The Few, Not The Many

  I once wrote a book I couldn’t sell (not once actually – about a quarter of all my novels go through this ‘nobody-in-their-right-mind-will-publish-this’ phase). ‘Calabash’ was a coming-of-age novel about a clever, lonely teenager who accidentally falls between a rundown British seaside town in the 1970s and a fantastical version of ancient Persia, where […]

Everybody Loves A Villain

‘And thus I clothe my naked villainy With odd old ends stol’n out of holy writ; And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.’ Richard III was not stupid; villains rarely are. They’re vain, pompous, blind, flawed, egotistical and psychotically ambitious. One of the most fun villains for Londoners has been Boris Johnson, […]

The Supernatural On Film Part 2

Films can shape writers as much as books. My love of the supernatural stems from the earliest films I saw, although none were from Hollywood except ‘The Haunting’. On Sundays we always had double cinema bills of old – sometimes very old – films. It was a great cheap way of catching up with what […]