Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 299

More Spitfire Posters

The Spitfire beer campaign continues in pubs using Armstrong & Miller’s WWII characters, in which they appeared in cliched wartime situations using modern teen slang. It was a clever way of toning down a campaign that was getting a bit anti-Teutonic. Plus, they allow creatives to continue the fine tradition of not having to think [...]

On Being Sold Less For More

Once hotels were cathedrals of awe and grandeur, palaces of calm and elegance. Now you’re about to be given the opposite. Welcome to the next hot trend; hotels that aren’t.

It’s been brewing for a while, hardly surprising as it comes from Whitbread, the company behind Premier Inns – the kind of grim plasticky hotels you [...]

Not Cricket? Actually It Is!

I’ve always liked Neil Hannon of ‘The Divine Comedy’. His voice isn’t great, but his songs have real power and a sense of fun to them (actually it would be nice to hear what somebody else makes of the vocals).

A couple of years back, he teamed up with Thomas Walsh of Pugwash to form ‘The [...]

What’s In A Win?

Well, I didn’t win a coveted Dagger last night at the CWA crime awards – the terrific Belinda Bauer won for ‘Rubbernecker’. Her novel is a genuinely surprising whodunnit, and her award was very well deserved - and at least I got to compete in the Olympics of crime writing. I honestly thought I didn’t [...]

New English Magic

These are haunted isles. But as the population has moved away from the countryside into the cities, magic has to find new ways to survive. We all have our superstitions and odd beliefs, but lately they’ve started resurfacing in a new strand of English films. Perhaps it’s cyclical; in the late 1940s and again in [...]

Having Fun With Tube Posters

Well, I finally broke Google Search today, trying to find something I vividly remember, but clearly nobody else does.

Opposite the platforms in the London Undergroundthere was a long-running series of posters put up by a man called Benny who owned a strange restaurant inKnightsbridge called the Borscht-n-Tears. The ads looked like they’d been designed by [...]

What’s Wrong With Ally Pally?

Alexandra Palace is one of the most extraordinary and least known buildings in London. Situated high on a hill in N22, the Grade II listed building has a massive glass atrium and stunning 360 degree views. It was constructed in 1873 as a recreation centre for Victorians, but was destroyed by fire just 16 days [...]

Will Court Cameras Change Crime Writing?

Channel 4 made UK history last week by showing a real murder trial on British television. The channel had lost its integrity after opting to run the ‘Big Brother’ series in the nineties (it was the main reason I stopped working with them) and this prime time show had the makings of another step down [...]

Excerpt: A Little Bit Of ‘Plastic’

One of the main stumbling blocks I had in selling ‘Plastic’ for so long was that in the period when I wrote the first draft it had suddenly become unfashionable for a man to write a novel in the first-person female form.

Perhaps there was an idea that with the rising cult of personality, authors now [...]

Still Watching The Clock

I’ve written about Christian Marclay’s extraordinary work ‘The Clock’ before, but this is the first time I’m aware of that anyone has been able to post a chunk of it online – presumably shot on someone’s phone.

How long do you look at a piece of art for? A minute? Two? I watched ‘The Clock’ for [...]