Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 196

The True Plot That Was Too Bizarre To Be Used

A little while back I was in Tokyo, and – always punting around for new plots for the Bryant & May books – I stumbled across a bizarre story that was unfolding in Japanese newspapers. The more I read about it the more fascinated I became, and earmarked it for use in a B&M book. […]

My Bumper Spring Of Publications

Due to a slight miscommunication with my publisher it seems that the mass market edition of ‘Bryant & May and the Burning Man’ is appearing on February 25th, just before the hardback arrival of ‘Bryant & May: Strange Tide’, the detectives’ mystery concerning strange deaths on the Thames, and the novel which will solve the […]

Swiss Try To Halt Anne Frank Freedom

Anyone for a ripe slice of Swiss sleaze? We know that Anne Frank wrote her own diary when she was 15 because her father Otto told us so in the preface. The book’s copyright is now owned by a Swiss foundation in Basel, and it’s due to run out on January 1st, after the usual […]

Sight & Sound No.1

Why do we love films? For me, one of the earliest and greatest thrills I ever had was discovering the moments in film when visuals and music perfectly match each other to create great moments – we think perhaps of classics like ‘Citizen Kane’ and ‘Psycho’, but this is a new sequence of sight & […]

The Tragedy Of ‘Timbuktu’

In Abderrahmane Sissako’s astonishingnew film we get a chance to explore the sheer lunacy of the jihadists’ worldview from both sides. In a heartfelt polemic that uses subtlety and calm (Oliver Stone, please note) it builds a complex picture through the simplest images, via several unfolding story strands. A herder loses a cow and the […]

No Post Today In Respect For Paris

Raymond Kirkpatrick Looks At British Newspapers

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 much his own. Every morning on my way to my job at the British Library I have a whip around the national dailies […]

Those Fabulously Dreadful 1950s Monster Movies Part 2

In 1957 the fear of atom bombs, destruction and mutation reached its peak, and Bert I Gordon was there to capitalise on it. He specialised in films about really big things. In ‘The Amazing Colossal Man’ it’s an ordinary man who’s mutated by errant, uncontrollable atom energy.After the huge success of ‘The Incredible Shrinking Man’ […]

Raymond Kirkpatrick’s New Rules For London

In travels across London, one can’t help but notice how some things could be improved. Of course I’m far too polite to suggest changes so I invited one of Arthur Bryant’s contacts, theheavy metal-loving bear-like Professor of English,Raymond Kirkpatrick, to be ourguest speaker. Here are his top five bugbears; 1. Remember we aren’t children! […]

The Top Soundtracks

Earlier this year, the soundtrack composer James Horner was killed in a plane crash, and we lost one of Hollywood’s finest composers working. I always play soundtrack music as I write, and his scores often feature in my daily playlist. The top soundtracks get voted on by the public every year. This year the top […]