Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 200

Oi, Oyster-Face! The Power Of Slang

Words – I’m drowning in them, realising just how poorer our once-ripe language is becoming as online-speak drains the strength from our dialogue. What brought this on? I just tracked down a Penguin paperback copy of ‘A Dictionary of Historical Slang’, an immense tome by Eric Partridge (well over a thousand pages – and abridged!) […]

Further Secrets Of Bryant & May Part 1

Writers don’t always know exactly what they’re doing; the subconscious steps in when the logical brain checks out. It sometimes takes an outsider to see more clearly. I recently received this appraisal of my detective duo on thelockedroommystery.com, an erudite site that takes in-depth looks at its particular specialised area of mysteries. In the process, […]

The Wonderful World Of Podcasts

‘I couldn’t live without Radio 4’ is a sentence you hear a lot in Britain. The channel is a riveting mix of erudite factual series, but it has been challenged by the inexorable rise of the quality podcast. Downloading a whole online audio series became more popular than ever after ‘Serial’ explored its real-life murder […]

Keeping Cities In Balance

The hardest thing for any incoming Mayor to do is finding a way to maintain a city’s quality of life. Cities need to be kept in balance between residence and tourism, environmental concerns and commerce. The two cities in which I live offer a stark contrast. In London, regulations that hamper Chinese tourism are being […]

Do Middle Class Tastes Kill The ‘Popular’ Arts?

Here in Great Britain we are still cursed with divisions of class – perhaps more now than at any time since the Edwardian era. You only have to get on a plane to hear the new generation of privilege speaking with a powerful sense of entitlement. Like their parents they consider themselves to be positioned […]

The Mystery Surrounding ‘The Sand Men’

Before the incredible review for ‘The Sand Men’ in Starburst came in, a pricey new magazine called Crime Scene reviewed it, and for the most part was a rave, with one cavil; a worry from reviewer David Bradley that it has ‘no clear ending’. Personally, I think it has a very clear ending – I’ve […]

The Story Workshop

After attending SlungLow’s arts workshops in Leeds last week I promised to put my notes online, so here is the essence of what I said – the idea was to inspire the young groups to write a scary story. This is a crash course with a specific aim; finding a practical way to write […]

The Story Worshop

After attending SlungLow’s arts workshops in Leeds last week I promised to put my notes online, so here is the essence of what I said – the idea was to inspire the young groups to write a scary story. This is a crash course with a specific aim; finding a practical way to write […]

The Contrary View: Wilde Deserved His Fate

‘They drove poor Oscar to his grave,’ The Divine Comedy’s Neil Hannon sings on his album, ‘Absent Friends’, echoing the revised opinion that had transformed Oscar Wilde from ‘reviled pervert’ to ‘martyred genius’. As various anniversaries arrived, the genius of Oscar was commemorated with great style and occasional crassness. Reformed public opinion was well under […]

What’s Happening To British Food?

First Great Britain had a brilliant national cuisine utilising all of the colours and flavours of a country with four distinct seasons (and you could eat a swan). Then it was wrecked by two devastating wars and the arrival of bullying supermarkets. Americans teased us about our national food, forgetting that rationing rules shuttered restaurants […]