Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 302

Day Jobs of the Detectives

When I gave Arthur Bryant a spare time job, I decided to make him a London tour guide. It seemed an appropriate hobby for a bobby. And over the decades, detectives have had all kinds of other jobs…

Clayton Rawson started studying to be a magician when he was eight. Later he put his magic skills [...]

Developing Your Reading Tastes

There’s so little free space in newspapers now available to literary criticism that we tend not to write about books we don’t personally get on with. Instead, we use that space to champion books that may not have come to the attention of readers.

However, any writer who has also written criticism will tell you that [...]

Cliptastic 1: These Are A Few Of My Favourite Films

I’ve mentioned quite a few offbeat films lately (here and in ‘Film Freak’) but locating them at all is really hard – except on YouTube, where they can often be found, so if you’re willing to put up with poorer picture quality you can sometimes be rewarded with a full feature. Here’s the first in [...]

A Dagger I See Before Me (I Wish!)

Admin does not usually get excited about the winning of awards, literary or otherwise. Many seem rather arbitrary, a few – like the Oscars – are simply a joke, and most seem to be preceded by a speech from Jimmy Carr. As for lifetime achievements, they’re usually granted when you’re on your last legs.

But earlier [...]

The Not-So-Secret Dreams Of The Hard Right

A lovely piece today about the Conservatives’ Awkward Squad parliamentary attempt to outflank Nigel Farrage’s UKIP manifesto with a wishlist of their own that would come into force if the present Prime Minister was replaced through incapacitation. The moves included banning the burka, privatising the BBC, bringing back smoking in private clubs, having a referendum [...]

Richard Matheson, Master Of The Incredible

Richard Matheson, SF and fantasy writer, has died aged 87. Ina career spanning more than 60 years, he wrote stories that smoothly translated from the page to both big and small screens. Several of his works were adapted into films, including 1953′s ‘Hell House’, 1956′s ‘The Shrinking Man’, 1958′s ‘A Stir of Echoes’and 1978′s ‘What [...]

Re:View – Disaster Double Bill!

As summer took its grip on London and the temperature plunged, bringing fresh rain, I went for a B-movie double bill, to hit the spots that remain untouched by all those sensitive French dramas I watch.

First up was ‘Bait’, an Australian trash flick produced by the once-great Russell Mulcahy. Thanks to a CGI tsunami, [...]

English Peculiar On Film

After writing ‘Film Freak’ I realised that the book was more or less a requiem for popular British film, and that the only future for a national cinema lay in arthouse independents. And yet over the years there have been a number of other small British films which found admittedly small audiences, yet remain gems [...]

Truth & Lies About London

The study of London books has become rather like the study of London itself, a need to get away from the usual main thoroughfares to explore the less well-known side alleys. ‘London Fictions’, edited by Jerry White (himself the author of many exemplary books about London) and Andrew Whitehead, author and editor, takes 26 authors [...]

London All Mapped Out

Stephen Walter’s ‘London Subterranea’ fuses the art of cartography with cartooning, along with London trivia. His work is based on London’s Tube network, and he showcases the city’s hidden underground history – charting everything from buried rivers, bunkers and sewers to government tunnels and even the sites of unsolved murders. You can still buy gold [...]