Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 314

Competition: Win ‘The Casebook Of Bryant & May’

It’s compo time! A simply delightful limited edition hardcover copy of ‘The Casebook of Bryant & May’ is now set to become even more collectable because it is set to be the first in an annual series, and will be signed, dated and numbered by me before being mailed out (UK only, I’m afraid, but [...]

In My Bad Books No.1

Ho ho, very droll – last night someone presented me with a copy of a book called ‘Creating Writing For Beginners’. You get this sort of thing a lot. But nothing quite like this book, by someone called Jim Green. It’s one of the most unintentionally hilarious manuals I’ve ever skipped through. First of all, [...]

In Which I Become Arthur Bryant

As regular readers know, I’m not much prone to swearing in print, but….fuck.Today is my 60th birthday. Let’s take that slowly; six-tie-th…

Trust me, it’s a bigger shock for me than it is for you. I certainly don’t feel any different to 30, except that I’m not worried about money all the time now. For me, [...]

Three London Questions No.2

Where in London will you find a still-functioning water wheel?

At Morden Hall Park, a five minute walk from Morden tube station.This former estate had a school for young gentlemen, but was sold in the 1870s to a tobacco seller.

The wheel used to be part of a snuff mill, grinding tobacco until 1922. The mill is [...]

Three London Questions No.1

Are there secret surveillance rooms in the back of Marble Arch?

Supposedly they’re there, but they haven’t been used since the 1950s. The arch was modelled on the Arch of Constantine in ancient Rome, and originally built by John Nash in 1828 as an entrance to Buckingham Palace but ended up stranded at the bottom of [...]

One Month Without A Supermarket 2

Apparently I’m not the only one with this idea. This morning I braved the sleet to avoid the only supermarket we have and shop in a new local farmers’ market. I found it busy, considering the adverse weather conditions. The butcher, usually empty, was full. He gets his meat fresh from Smithfield, so there’s no [...]

Egad! Still More London Books!

Popping into St Pancras Station this morning to sign some books (tip; if you ever want a signed Bryant & May, that’s the place to go), I remind myself that this is simply the nicest station in the world (although the one in Cairo is kind of fun in a scary, let’s-get-out-of-here way). For a [...]

Carry On Up The Amazon

This is a big shut-out of thanks to everyone who posted a review of ‘The Casebook of Bryant & May’ on Amazon, only to find no book there. It would seem that the very lovely limited edition volume is still not up on Amazon because, thanks to a change in their working practices, Amazon needed [...]

Goodbye, Jim Herbert

The US literary horror boom of the 1970s didn’t go unnoticed over here. Publishers suddenly saw that there were some excellent writers emerging, including Michael McDowell, Jeffrey Konvitz and Thomas Tryon, and striding above them all was Stephen King. The most famous genre writers are rarely the best (compare JK Rowling to Susanna Clarke) but [...]

Re:View – ‘Spymonkey – Cooped’

This is an old show from the celebrated comedy troop, currently revived at the Leicester Square Theatre, one of the least-known but nicest London venues, home to old stars (Joan Collins and Julie Felix are there next month) and stand-ups. Spymonkey have tailored some of their silliest routines into a Gothic horror Old-Dark-House story involving [...]