Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 210

London’s Home Movies

In his head, Arthur Bryant still sees London as it was; his memories were based on my mother’s, as she was living in town working as a secretary, and had vivid recall of life around her. Now the British Film Institute is rolling out a huge project called Britain on Film which includes home movies, […]

Cutting Edge Victoriana Is Back

Long-time readers will remember the quirky story of the rise and fall of the Players’ Theatre. Well, it seems you can’t keep an eccentric British night out down, because they’re back with a salute to the French national festival of July 14th,featuring a tribute to Edith Piaf and other French stars of “Le Music Hall”, […]

Eight Great Forgotten Anthologies

Anthologies are not collections. The former are compilations from a variety of authors under the aegis of an editor who makes the selections, and the latter stem from a single writer. Anthologies were once hugely popular in the UK and provided an inexpensive way of discovering new writers; a task now performed by e-readers. Consequently […]

After The Dark

I watch a hell of a lot of strange movies. (‘Yellowbrickroad’ anyone? Don’t play it on headphones, it’ll blow your ears out!) Once in a while you stumble across a movie so strange that you think it can’t possibly sustain its running time. Welcome to ‘After The Dark’, a film with such an unusual subject […]

Seven Reasons To Prefer Glasgow

It’s a great time of the year to go to Scotland – as an urbanite I never quite got their countryside, all that heather and brown grass (of course, I’ve never actually been through it, but I saw ‘Mrs Brown’). I liked Edinburgh well enough until I went to Glasgow and realised what I was […]

What Makes A Perfect Al Fresco Movie?

It’s summer and rooftop/park/lido cinema is here, sometimes great, often not (depending on sound quality, the weather and the fee – Secret Cinema, this means you) but I’ve noticed something interesting. Certain films crop up again and again for outoor screens. This year the one that has made almost every list is ‘Whiplash’, the drumming-as-torture […]

Peculiar British Performers: Sandy Powell

Peter Dixon comments that I should have included the late, great Sandy Powell in my pieces on peculiar British performers, so here he is, in two clips fifty years apart. He’s an example of a comedian who was funnier when he was older, although the early clip has a nice streak of Northern darkness in […]

Why Does America Value The Printed Word More?

Recently I had a row (well, an argument in a pub) with a friend complaining about US publishers and the type of fiction that gets published. His point seemed to be that during the Thatcher years UK universities had to sell off manuscripts, and these were bought by the US colleges who then retained the […]

At Home In The Old Pubs Of London

I love kids, but feel their parents shouldn’t think they can go anywhere. Which brings us to pubs. Research today points out that less than 1 in 10 pub visits are for the beer, and that most landlords now make their money by running family-friendly restaurants. Is the day of the ‘quick pint’ over? In […]

Very Peculiar British Performers Part 2

Films often struggled to find places for performers who had been hugely popular on stage doing variety in places like the Hippodromes and the Palaces. Frankie Howerd’s strange grimacing non-act of postures and false starts was utterly hilarious live (he seemed able to entirely dispense with a script) but was a tough one to fit […]