Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 188

Goodbye To Britain’s Most Balanced Print Newspaper

Charismatic Russian owner Evgeny Lebedevhas confirmed that the print versions of the Independent are closing after 30 years, leaving the British print media landscape much poorer without it. Or to put it another way, the Independent is to become ‘the first national newspaper title to move to a digital-only future, capitalising on its position as […]

‘Mrs Henderson Presents’ – Review

What is Englishness? I found myself wondering this in one of the few longeurs in this show, which opens at the Noel Coward Theatre in London next week. I suppose it partly resides in the vast fund of shared knowledge we have. We know the story of the Windmill well – how an elderly widow […]

Male & Female Reading

Despite the new century’s welcome seismic shift in sexual equality, we all know there are gender divisions in reading. Or as my father once put it; ‘Romantic novels are for middle-aged women who hate their husbands.’ I’ve met few men who profess to having read ‘Jane Eyre’, a novel I find turgid and deeply peculiar, […]

The Great Horror Craze

Back in the 1960s America and Britain went through a massive passion for all things horrific. In fact, it lasted from around 1957 to 1972, according to the new book ‘Monster Mash’ by Mark Voger. It started in America with midnight movie hosts like Zacherley and Vampira (which we didn’t get in the UK) and […]

Can The Kindle Bounce Back?

When e-readers were first introduced, book lovers reacted as if it was the end of the world. Despite the fact that many early e-readers were badly made and connected to poorly organised online booksellers, paper books were suddenly feared as dead as investigative journalism and independent fish shops. After struggling with various models including a […]

Why Imagination Needs Exercise

By their nature writers are traditionally outsiders who refuse to settle, either physically in one place, or mentally. The author JG Ballard was famously described as ‘He doesn’t care where he lives, because he lives inside his head’. This year I’ll be putting that theory to the test. As we have to move out of […]

‘Warning! Vividly Depicts Axe Murders!’

So bellowed the captions in the trailer for 1964’s ‘Strait-Jacket’, which also promised that it ‘may go beyond your ability to withstand suspense’. There’s a cycle of books and films rather forgotten now which were inspired by the massive international success of ‘Psycho’. Domestic Suspense is a category of fiction that had almost disappeared […]

Top 5 Things You Don’t Need In Airports

I don’t consider myself a regular traveler – my neighbours board planes every other day to fly around the planet for one-hour business meetings. Downstairs neighbour Becky actually said to me; ‘Let’s go for cocktails on Friday – or am I in China?’ But I’m definitelyGeneration Easyjet, the king of shorthaul trips, and think nothing […]

Another Hidden London Oddity Is Exposed To The Light

It seems for each part of hidden London we lose a new one is exposed. First New Scotland Yard’s Crime Museum was finally unveiled (I attended a terrific police lecture there this week) and now the mysterious Mount Pleasant train will be seen by Londoners. The Mail Line opened in 1927 and was the first […]

Anatomy Of A Comic Tale

Stories tend to reflect the times in which they were written, whether you mean them to or not. Before John Hughes became a film director, he wasa creative director at the Leo Burnett ad agency’s Chicago branch. In 1979 he got snowed in and was stuck at home, so he wrote a short story for […]