Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 163

Why Ticket Prices Are Soaring In Touristown

At the start of this year a friend gave me some theatre tokens for my birthday, and by the time I got around to using them today, there weren’t enough to buy one full ticket. What just took place? I asked a box office expert. ‘What’s happened is that the internet is full of discounted […]

‘Nocturnal Animals’

No Spoilers Last night the luminous Amy Adams and her director Tom Ford took to the London stage to try and explain just why ‘Nocturnal Animals’ works so beautifully. Adams pointed out that Ford allows the performances to breathe instead of cutting them to death – and it shows. The most wrenching moments in this […]

Ink Is Ammunition!

Humour magazines once proliferated throughout the western world, from Le Canard Enchaine to Punch, Lilliput and Spy, they scored points with erudition, wit and yes, cruelty. There has pretty much always been a ‘journal bête et méchant‘ in France, and the same in the UK. I’ve written before about America’sNational Lampoon, which had grown out […]

The Two Words You Can No Longer Say In The UK

Whether we care to admit it or not, Britain is more divided by class than at any time since the mid-Victorian era. The upper classes, once branded by Alan Clark is the people who don’t have to buy their own furniture, may be embattled but they still own the greatest swathes of land in the […]

Upcoming Movies: ‘Arrival’, ‘La La Land’

No spoilers DenisVilleneuve’s ‘Arrival’ is big-budget SF that starts pretty much where ‘Close Encounters’ ended. The first five minutes establishes that 12 gigantic space vessels have appeared around the earth, and we now have to figure out how to contact them without getting our heads blown off. Why have they come here – and why […]

Greenery & Greed

Last year councils decided to start charging personal trainers who use parks for one-on-one sessions, a move 99% of the public is totally opposed to. They then hired spies to look out for trainers and fine them. The system is also in place in Australia. But that’s missing the point. In Australia it’s nice to […]

The Future? Is That It Then?

In 1967 I read a magazine listing the top things consumers wanted right now, not in the future. They included flat TV screens and legalised marijuana. Well, those things came, just fifty years later.Today I opened my paper (I’m using that term metaphorically. I hit a Google tab) and found myself looking at a Victorian […]

A Plethora Of Perverse Pleasures

Happy Autumn! It’s a bit of a bumper time coming up for me, with my earliest collections of short stories, ‘City Jitters’, ‘The Bureau of Lost Souls’, ‘Sharper Knives’ and ‘Flesh Wounds’ all due out as e-books on October 28th at low prices, then‘Bryant & May: London’s Glory’ out in paperback on November 5th. Following […]

Raymond Kirkpatrick On Politics

Raymond Kirkpatrick is a colleague of Arthur Bryant’s. The bear-like heavy metal-loving Professor of English is currently working at the British Library and is our occasional guest speaker. His opinions are very, very much his own. Blimey! So another Ukipper goes out for the count – literally this time. Some bloke called Steven Woolfe got […]

The Dilly Gets A Makeover – But Why?

The six eye-waveringly bright advertising hoardings on the north side of Piccadilly Circus are to become one giant screen, ad space which could be sold for 30 million a year. The ad site launched more than a century ago. Since then it has become one of the world’s most exclusive ad hoardings.Now Land Securities, which […]