Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 135

A Machine For Living Part 2

  I had lived in the cluttered little Kentish Town house above for 25 years, and the move to an apartment came as a shock. You can’t really change the layout of a terraced house without compromising it. They weren’t built to be messed about with. I had tried removing walls, but my actual use […]

A Machine For Living Part 1

I was raised in the street above, in a small terraced house of the type that existed all across London, with a front room, a back room, a kitchen and scullery down three hall steps, a first floor landing with two rooms leading from it, two more bedrooms and a sloping tiled roof. Such houses […]

The Victorias Are Vanishing

In the Ealing comedy ‘Passport To Pimlico’ a treasure chest is uncovered and finances a London borough as it enters its own Brexit negotiations with the capital. The treasurers meet in their local pub to examine their dug-up wealth. One points out that they now have ducats and ewers, sparking this exchange. ‘What’s ewers?’ ‘Mine’s […]

Why Pride Still Matters

I haven’t been to Pride in London since Victorian times, when we were beaten with wolves and locked up at the bottom of the lake in Hyde Park before appearing in magistrate’s courts early in the morning so that the judges could get off to brothels before teatime, but if one thing could persuade me […]

Connecting The Dots

Some of you may remember that I used to start off every volume of my short stories with a state-of-the-nation piece linking lots of different news items together. They were intended to provide a snapshot of the times in which the tales were written, the better to understand how these stories arose. For example, this […]

I Have A New Book Out Today!

  Today is my publication day for ‘Little Boy Found’. It’s my first e-book although (as I’ve probably mentioned several thousand times) it will see regular paperback print if/when we hit our reader target, and it’s the first I’ve written under a pseudonym. So, thank you to everyone who has ordered this in advance; you […]

Is This The Best Short Story Ever Written?

A short while ago I gave a talk about short stories that touched me and I remembered this one, which I first read as a child. It’s a small story about a big thing – life. The start of the 20th century was a glorious time to be writing. There were lots of publishing outlets, […]

‘1984’ 33 Years On

This is the latest in a series of blog posts that looks at George Orwell’s book from ever-lengthening perspectives. There are always two dates to mention when dealing with George Orwell’s masterwork – the year of its publication (1949) and the year in its title. Orwell inverted the title as he was writing it, but […]

What Can You Find For Under A Pound?

…There aren’t many things but this is one of them. The little boy’s name is Gabriel, and he’s dropped off to school by his father Nick on the morning of his birthday. But in a brief second of inattention Gabriel is lost from sight outside the playground. However, this is not another missing child story. What […]

Mephisto’s Bridge

An enlightening little  mention here on where the ideas for the film ‘Hellboy 2’ came from. My novel ‘Spanky’ was turned into the film script ‘Mephisto’s Bridge’, and so very nearly got made. I’d rather director Guillermo del Toro had created an original feature rather than a comic book sequel, but the film he was persuaded […]