Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 221

Why Mr Bryant Loves Gilbert & Sullivan

Is there anything more unfashionable than admitting to liking Gilbert & Sullivan? In this day and age, who would still listen to the work of two fusty gentlemen who lived over a century ago, who are routinely dismissed by classical music lovers as being of no interest or importance? And what’s their attraction for my […]

Why There Are Fewer Original Novels…

Today’s column is a coalescence of several others I’ve been writing and thinking about for a while. It came to a head when I gave a speech at the Southbank Literary Festival about outsider status. I’d written before on the subject, but the speech introduced a number of outsiders from different centuries. The ultimates are […]

Mysteries and Thrillers Are Opposites

As always it took the excellent Val McDermid to point out what should have been obvious; that crime and mystery novels are left wing and thrillers are right wing. Writing in the Guardian, she points out that the crime novelgives a voice to characters who are not comfortably established in the world, while thrillers play […]

Is London Losing Signs And Gaining Statues?

Look up in London and a menagerie of animals greets you, from locusts and beetles to lions, dragons, camels and fish. There’s a statue of a deer at Wimbledon and another camel at Victoria Embankment, and a cat at Highgate Hill. Statues proliferate, especially if they’re animals, because they’re non-controversial. Signs tend to vanish. Many […]

Is London Losing Its Signs?

Look up in London and a menagerie of animals greets you, from locusts and beetles to lions, dragons, camels and fish. Many indicated the kind of businesses that were being conducted out of their buildings. At 105 Oxford Street there are beavers on the roof because felt hats were once made there. There are also […]

Right Material, Wrong Venue

When the Royal Opera House opened an original new work about Anna Nicole Smith, some audiences expressed horror at the choice of subject matter for such an august venue. Personally, I’d rather stick needles in my eyes than sit through another dusty production of ‘La Traviata’. It’s not because I haven’t enjoyed it before – […]

Something Strange Is Happening To What You Watch

In the century since the major film studios first settled in Hollywood, audiences have never demanded more video than they do today. In 2014, wewatched an average of 163 hours of video content per month (17 hours more than in 2007). But despite the proliferation of content, consumption and access, the value of the home […]

Working For Your Lunch

The ever-prescient Londonistrecently pointed out the average cost of a working Londoner’s lunch; a conservatively-estimated 830 p.a. And if you factor in visits to Pret A Manger you can add a few more hundred quid to that bill. Then you’ve got the choice of dining ‘al desko’ or trying to find a free square of […]

Best Photographic Books On London

There are now so many volumes of photographs of London it’s hard to know where to start. I tend to avoid books of the staple shots that crop up again and again, and go for something with more of an individual point of view. A number of picture libraries have released their photographs, and these […]

Two Oxfords

I did not go to university. My grades were good enough to secure an excellent placement, but ultimately it was my decision not to go. I wanted to follow in the footsteps of the many writers who had started by honing language in advertising, then move into journalism. During that journey, I fell out of […]