Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 238

Almost As Good As The Real Thing

The BBC gets a lot of stick about what it saved from the postwar years and what it wiped, but back then it was hard to know what would stand the test of time. They kept many Shakespearian productions which have often weathered badly and threw away daily ephemera, much of which is now fascinating […]

The Clickbait Journalism That Went Too Far

Perhaps it started with the Sunday Times. The newspaper’s brilliant Insight team brought genuine scoops from the uncovering ofSoviet defector Kim Philly’s rolein MI6 tothe thalidomide scandal and its links with Haig whisky, whorevealed Israel’s secret manufacture of nuclear weapons and,recently, the FIFA cash-for-votes scandal, but after Rupert Murdoch acquired it in 1981 much of […]

Early Christmas Gifts For Yourself

The nature of present-giving at Christmas is changing. My friends are moving out of London. Quite a few of us now go away for the extended break. The purchase and delivery of gifts is now almost an ordeal. My brother has a connection to a farm but doesn’t live nearby, and one Christmas found our […]

Central London’s Last Quiet Neighbourhood

After my Halloween reading at the National Liberal Club, we took a stroll in the only remaining part of Central London that’s truly under-visited. Mist had rolled in from the river and it was drizzling softly, creating aureoles of light around the street lamps. There were no cars and hardly any people, and it […]

Why Is London So Scruffy?

When the spectacular Victorian Gothic edifice of the St Pancras Grand Hotel decided to open a bar called the Gilbert Scott, its restored interior exceeded all expectations. From the vast painted ceiling hang immense golden bells, and the space is outrageously opulent, although it lacks the personality of the great hotel bars and is consequently […]

Writer Knocks Out Another Thriller: Forgets To Tell Readers

Ah. Yes. Sorry about that. ‘The Elimination Bureau’ was written in a week for the lovely people at Specsavers who support crime writing, in this case by commissioning us to work for free. But I don’t really mind once in a while, and it turned out rather well. This involves a female DCI in […]

England’s Asylums

When I was a child we went to visit a friend of my mother’s in Holloway Sanatorium, near Virginia Water in Surrey. I remember long, wide airy rooms overlooking rolling grasslands and a few patients dotted about, very docile and silent. What I don’t think I saw was its astonishingly colourful interior (as shown on […]

‘Bryant & May and the Burning Man’ Gets An Early Launch

Bryant & May 12; The Burning Man, or Bryant & May and the Burning Man, if you prefer – it makes no odds – has been an utter delight for me to write, and in many ways feels like the most rounded volume yet, even though the ending may prove a tad upsetting for some. […]

Blue Sky Thinking

North-East England isn’t a very sunny place. Perhaps that’s what inspired the CPI, a product development organisation, to come up with this genius idea. The CPI is one of seven bodies under the High Value Manufacturing Catapult,an umbrella group which receives government funding to drive growth in manufacturing. The aviation industry has a problem. How […]

Is Holborn Becoming The New Shoreditch?

My mother and father both worked in High Holborn, the odd no-man’s-land between New Oxford Street and Gray’s Inn Road (roughly speaking; the boundaries were changed in 1994). It was filled with sturdy, wealthy insurance offices, law firms, accountancy, marine and travel companies, and the head offices of the Empire’s manufacturing outlets. It’s a pretty […]