Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 251

Quality Of Life, What’s That Then?

If there’s one magazine that seems specifically designed to get me riled, it’s ‘Monocle’, Tyler Broolay’s (can’t be bothered finding the accents on this laptop) gigantic style-bible of all things cool in the world, usually featuring decommissioned concrete factories in the Ukraine that have been turned into gin bars. A flip through the pages goes […]

Wrestling The Monster

There was a film by Nick Broomfield about Spalding Gray’s attempt to write a new novel called ‘Monster In A Box’, which struck a horrible chord of familiarity with me. I’ve never had writer’s block as such, but I believe there are ‘easy’ books and ‘hard’ books. The former are smooth to write, come in […]

My All-Time Summer Discs

I had no idea that the show ‘Desert Island Discs’ was still going. The last time I tuned in, Roy Plomley was interviewing people who always seemed to choose the Grenadier Guards playing something hideously patriotic. Given that my musical tastes fluctuate whimsically, it’s hard to pull together a definitive top ten for the summer, […]

Bryant & May Location No. 4

The Savoy theatre and hotel both feature heavily in ‘Seventy Seven Clocks’, the theatre especially because of its unique place in world history. Sir Richard D’Oyly Carte was ahead of his time (we honour him now in rhyming slang, the ultimate accolade, although I’m not sure he’d agree). His theatre was the home of Gilbert […]

Make Money As An Author: Die Young

Seriously, they’ll be able to republish your first novel while people are feeling sorry for you. It’ll be a good career move. It’s a long-standing maxim that while ‘no man except a blockhead ever wrote except for money’ (cf. Samuel Johnson), no-one can really make a living doing it. The traditional answer to that statement […]

London Takes Back The Night

I recall a particularly grim night spent outside in London at a Midsummer Eve festival in Greenwich Park, when the winds suddenly turned arctic, it rained torrentially and the taxis home vanished. You book outside events in our summer at your peril. Back then, the choice was limited to a few parks, pub gardens and […]

Permission To Laugh

An alarming idea today: Are readers and audiences now obeying demographics, which were once designed to categorise their tastes? It strikes me because, when I analyse successful entertainment (as all writers are prone to do) I can see a huge new change in our habits. Prior to the compartmentalisation of consumption, we enjoyed a book […]

London Dead Or Alive

It’s time to take a look at the new books about London and its residents. To start with, we have ‘A London Pub For Every Occasion’, apparently not written by anyone at all, which is a dubious first. This had great potential, even iff the information is readily available online, and the selection of pubs […]

Smithfields Wins A Reprieve

Conservationists are celebrating a surprising victory after Communities Secretary Eric Pickles threw out a “wholly unacceptable” £160million scheme to redevelop much of Smithfield Market. The decision came after a high-profile campaign to halt the proposed scheme, which would have turned the western end of the market into an office, shop and restaurant complex. It was […]

Sit On A Good Book

Books about Town is all over London. There are 50 unique BookBench sculptures designed by local artists and famous names to celebrate London’s literary heritage and reading for enjoyment. They can be found on four separate trails on their website. I’m going to be pottering around a few when I get a chance, leaving books […]