Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 129

Another Skirmish In The Battle

I sometimes think I am fated to live at the heart of terrible life-changing events, always in cities caught up in change. Never having been one for a quiet life in the country, I’ve been too close to too many epicentres for comfort, but tonight is one that stirs the heart. In Barcelona I live beside […]

‘Dialogue Is Not Conversation’

This is a nugget of wisdom that I vaguely recall comes from the marvellous Kenneth Tynan (although I may be wrong – he delivered far too many bon mots). I was thinking about this because I’m writing a dialogue-heavy book at the moment, and also posted Maggie Armitage’s texts, which I trimmed for content but […]

Dialogue Is Not Conversation

This is a nugget of wisdom that I vaguely recall comes from the marvellous Kenneth Tynan (although I may be wrong – he delivered far too many bon mots). I was thinking about this because I’m writing a dialogue-heavy book at the moment, and also posted Maggie Armitage’s texts, which I trimmed for content but […]

Maggie’s Mind Lint 2

So, following from the onslaught in the earlier part of that week, Maggie fired off a few more missives about her daughter leaving London to work in Europe, which I boiled down to extract sense from… Amber is very anxious about another adventure. Poppy and I with Amber we had a Brazilian meal near goodfellas […]

Maggie’s Mind Lint 1

Above front is Maggie when she was a bunny girl. That was a long time ago now. These days she frequently communicates by text. Texts are perfect for providing succinct updates, but they aren’t meant to be used like letters. Not just any old letters but unedited, longhand letters written in haste with a leaky […]

UK Writers Like A Challenge. Well, They Have One Now.

I’ve always thought of myself as European but I’m not, of course. Bryant & May are only a very slight exaggeration of my relatives (although I have some German blood – ‘Like the royal family’, my mum said). I came from a solid middle-class if slightly desperate family who would have loved to go to […]

Today’s Topic…

I start at the top of the blank page. Note to self, pick up from yesterday, move it on. Grumping about the Last Night of the Proms is the tip of the iceberg; humanity as a whole is irredeemably, incorrigibly misguided. We are unreliable, chaotic, annoying and deeply, deeply stupid. The idea that a civilisation […]

Rituals Best Forgotten 2: The Last Night Of The Proms

The Proms, or to give them their full title the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts, are  an eight-week summer season of daily orchestral concerts and other events held annually, predominantly in the Albert Hall. The Proms are, of course, A Good Thing, bringing wonderful music arranged in imaginative concerts at affordable prices, currently run by the BBC, who […]

Rituals Best Forgotten 1: The London Season

For two hundred years, The London Season lay at the core of upper class British society. It was the time of year when rich, well-connected families left their country houses to head to London, where they would stay in grand houses and squares. Theoretically this was to lump together the ‘right people’ in a lengthy calendar […]

‘Stay, The Night Is Young And You Are Enormous!’

(This column is an updated version of one that first ran 5 years ago – I’m away for the weekend) As ‘The book of Forgotten Authors wends its way toward the general public, yesterday I looked back over my chaotic files, getting ready to bung a feather duster over them and put them in neat […]