Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 208

London’s Street Bankers

Whenever my gran wanted ‘a flutter’ on the horses or the dogs, she sent for the man over the road who acted as the street’s banker. Every working class street had a Mr Fix-It, as well as a local woman you could visit for ‘marital advice’. The men ran book, bought and sold, lent money, […]

London Tough

It’s said that if a girl can look good in London, she can look good anywhere. Everything conspires against her. We have the hardest water I’ve found anywhere in the world. It silts pipes and cracks skin. We have key hotspots of overcrowding (tip: avoid the Piccadilly Line between Russell Square and Piccadilly during rush […]

Does Geography Affect Creativity?

Readers have noticed that there’s an awful lot of rain in my mystery novels. That’s because they’re set in London, which – although drier now than ever before – is still a city of dark skies. I’m noticing a distinct correlation between my output and the weather, and not in the way you’d expect. Working […]

Favourite Soundtracks No. 3: ‘Wait Until Dark’

When it comes to scoring music for horror films and psychological thrillers, it’s astonishing how many composers choose drums and blasts of dense orchestral noise to beat their audiences into submission when something softer and eerier would be more insidious. Henry Mancini, best known for romantic ongs and the kind of lounge music that’s now […]

Bryant & May Move Into Twisted Territory

I’ve now delivered two new Bryant & May books; the first is for the Christmas season, and is entitled ‘Bryant & May: London’s Glory’. It will be out on November the 5th, and will be a collection of eleven missing cases, along with various oddities, background history, an essay on Golden Age detectives and the […]

Odd Films From Mainstream Directors

We know certain film directors by their greatest hits, but it’s fascinating to look at their entire careers and check out their so-called minor films, because they often tell us more about the directors’ passions. In many cases, the overlooked films in their canon are the ones I prefer to their crowd-pleasing hits. John McTiernan […]

The Greek Debt Explained

It is a slow day in a little Greek Village. The rain is beating down and the streets are deserted.Times are tough, everybody is in debt, and everybody lives oncredit. On this particular day a rich German tourist is driving throughthe village, stops at the local hotel and lays a 100 note on thedesk, telling […]

Personal Passions: ‘The Spirit’

If you’ve never read Will Eisner’s original The Spirit, you’ve missed out on probably the key foundation stone of comics. Eisner’s career spanned nearly seventy years, from the dawn of the comic book to the advent of digital comics. He truly was the ‘Orson Welles of comics’ and the father of the graphic novel. He […]

You’re Never Too Old For A Silly Shirt

Over the years I seem to have collected an unfeasibly large pile of weird T-shirts with slogans from Xana-Don’t! to What Can’t You Do With A Drunken Sailor? My neighbour Dan came up with the one above for us locals, and no, it doesn’t make much sense (although there are crayfish in the canals of […]

Reinventing England

Miguel Coyula, urban architect, has this to say about Cuba normalising its relations with America: ‘When you talk to people, and you ask them, Why are you visiting Havana? The common answer is, I want to see it now. … I want to see the real Havana. … So they share the fear that Havana […]