Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 332

Britain ‘Most Powerful Nation On Earth’ Shock!

I’m really struggling with this one. Britain is once again ‘the most powerful nation on earth’, according to a new survey, when it comes to ‘soft power’. From Danny Boyle’s Olympic ceremony, to 22 No 1 albums overseas, to Andy Murray’s first Grand Slam title, Britain projects more ‘positive influence’ around the world than any [...]

Team GB: Good Cause, Nice Moves

If this video was any sweeter you’d be able to spread it on toast points and eat it.

Official: Bryant & May Set To Return

The morning sky is still red but the week has started with a bang as news reaches me that Bryant & May have been given the go-ahead in the US for a further two novels! My American friends are still waiting for the arrival of ‘Bryant & May and the Invisible Code’, but this will [...]

Devourers & Unreadables

There have always been unreadable books and I never feel guilty for abandoning them. As a kid I remember Barbar The Elephant, Gallic tales perversely translated and printed in joined-up handwriting by publishers who clearly wanted you to become annoyed with the French at an early age. Tristram Shandy if the obvious contender for the [...]

Christmas Creeps

Every year we used to get an MR James or a Dickens ghost story adaptation on TV and they were usually pretty good – the BFI have now released them as a DVD box set – but why do only these two writers make it onto our screens? Does everything have to be in period [...]

20 Reasons Why My Friends Are Not Entirely Normal

As you get older it becomes harder to gauge just how in touch you (and your writing) are with those people around you. I’ve always thought of myself as pretty grounded; I catch the tube every day and visit my mum and have fish and chips and go down the pub with mates, and never [...]

What Did The Monarchy Ever Do For Us?

Ever get into an argument with an anti-Royalist student ranting about how much the royal family costs the British taxpayer? I think for a while I was one of those annoying kids, but was won over by a variety of factors. Here’s something to think about, from the ever-reliable CGP Grey.

Re:View – ‘Hitchcock’

It’s academy season, which means a movie a night for many of us. It’s not often you get to grill Dame Helen Mirren and Sir Anthony Hopkins, but last night, crammed into a tiny preview theatre in Soho, a few of us did after the screening of ‘Hitchcock’. If a film is poor then this [...]

‘Invisible Ink’ Becomes Visible Next Week

My new non-fiction book, ‘Invisible Ink: How 100 Great Authors Disappeared’ goes on sale next week from Strange Attractor Press. Yes, it caught me by surprise too! Here’s some jacket blurb for you (can someone invent a better word than ‘blurb’? It’s so onomatopoeic).

There are a great many authors we grew up with whose books [...]

Re:View – ‘Seven Psychopaths’

Martin McDonagh’s ‘In Bruges’ was one of the most criminally underrated films of its year. Writer/director McDonagh’s background in theatre writing is matched – a rare thing, this – by his visual acuity and love of movies, and here it finds the perfect form in a story that appears to play out like the thinking [...]