Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 260

London’s New Victorians

It’s official; London is back to being a boomtown. It’s now the city with the most billionaires - 72, if anyone other than the Sunday Times, who seem obsessed with the super-rich, cares. And thisin a country where many struggle financially, where certain cities have been all but abandoned and where food banks are now […]

‘With John Wayne On The Xylophone’

In keeping with the once-fashionable idea that children were actually miniature adults in training whose brains needed treating in the same way, British pop culture used to provide anklebiters with their own comics, newspapers, variety shows and comedy series which were versions of what the grown-ups consumed. I’d completely forgotten about ‘Do Not Adjust Your […]

Stealing Ideas

When someone says ‘I have a great idea for a novel’, I get apprehensive; ideas are what we create as sentient beings, and don’t amount to anything until they reach corporeal form. So your idea remains an idea until it exists outside of your head in another form. Are there an infinite number of them? […]

Overlooked Movies No.4

On paper it should have worked. The story of Dr Jekyll, retold from the point of view of his maid, had real potential. After all, a good Gothic tale needs a trusting woman who’s prepared to opened a locked door, and that’s the element usually lacking in the retelling of Robert Louis Stevenson’s alter-ego creeper. […]

The Stuff Of Science Fiction

According to The Independent, China has outlined its plan to connect the world by high-speed rail, including an underwater link to the US running a total 13,000km. The ‘China to Russia plus the United States’ line (they might want to come up with a catchier name) has been proposed by the Chinese Academy of Engineering, […]

10 Things We Need From Europe

I hate UKIP’s Nigel Farage because he considers himself the voice of common sense. He’s the voice of insulated Little England, the small thinker, the man who stays in the Olde Worlde English hotel with a hushed breakfast room serving bad food, the man who’s content to look and behave like a Tesco stock-buyer and […]

Are Bryant & May ‘Cosies’?

I’ll be at Bristol Crimefest in two weeks’ time, on Friday 16th May, where I’m on a panel about ‘cosies’. ‘Cosies’ are a form of crime-writing that remind readers of Agatha Christie’s safe, ‘nice’ stories, and it’s a tag I vehemently resist (so it should be a feisty panel). The Bryant & May books are […]

Re:View – ‘Ricky’

As a big fan of the French director Francois Ozon, I was surprised that I had missed his 2009 movie – I’m pretty sure it never made London. There are a few superb art house cinemas, but nowhere near enough. Maybe it hadn’t opened. And to be fair, it’s a tricky one. Not a bourgeois […]

I Am Now Bionic

Hattie Jacques: ‘Reading again, eh? You’ll hurt your eyes, you will.’ Tony Hancock: ‘I’ll hurt yours in a minute.’ Like people in most other careers, writers suffer from occupational injuries. Mainly they have lousy eyesight, poor social skills and bad posture. The second and third are solved by getting out more and taking exercise […]

Slow News Day

Lois Lane went undercover all the time – do you ever hear of a reporter doing that these days? Once newspapers were about data. A report of a war. A summation of a court case. Details of an accident. Before Maxwell and Murdoch destroyed Fleet Street, reporters were required to train for their jobs; you […]