Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 371

Possibly The Most Calming Thing You’ll Ever See

How did a simple phrase go from being a forgotten poster to an iconic symbol of modern England? Check out this excellent little explanation but be warned; you may rather deeply fall in love with the bookshop…

Men And Women Of Letters

A computer cannot replicate swirling arabesques of midnight blue ink on thick white paper.

Do you still write letters? If so, you’re in the tiny minority of people who do so. I’m an inveterate letter-writer. Although I enjoy online writing, it’s a convenience filled with codes and technicalities, not a relaxing affirmation of elegance. There’s nothing [...]

Hello? Hello?

You know you want one. A mobile with a dial? Come on! (Can’t seem to find out if it actually works…)

The Weird World of Black Cat Mysteries

The next gruesome Harvey Comics reprint – with a foreword by my good self – appears in a stonkingly smart slipcased edition (and there’s a regular edition) from PS Publishing. These are hilariously dark collections of true that are trashier than EC Comics but a lot of fun.

While EC explored the dark desires of the [...]

Re:View – ‘The Women On The Sixth Floor’

I’ve virtually given up on British films, most of which are either heritage pieces or ‘Did You Call My Pint A Poof?’-style wideboy gangland movies. When we do try to get a mainstream film right we screw it up. Working Title wasted nearly ten years developing ‘Thunderbirds’, only to get it hilariously wrong by condescending [...]

‘Red Gloves’ Nominated For Shirley Jackson Award

Shirley Jackson (1916-1965) wrote such classic novels as ‘The Haunting of Hill House’ and ‘We Have Always Lived in the Castle’, as well as one of the most famous short stories in the English language, ‘The Lottery’. Her work continues to be a major influence on writers of every kind of fiction, from the [...]

Something Concrete At Last?

Finally, a film to get excited about!

As usual the summer cinemas will be awash in the amiable biff-bang-codswallop of superhero movies and and talking animal flicks for the attention-challenged, so when I saw this poster my dark heart leapt. Brad Anderson is one of my favourite directors. Let’s forgive him the misstep of ‘Vanishing On [...]

It Came From Behind The Shelf No.2

I’ve always been mystified by the fact that the ‘Andy Capp’ comic strip runs in US newspapers. It was never funny in the Daily Mirror, and belongs to a weird postwar image of England’s past in a particular part of the country (the North), with rent collectors and whippet racing and pigeons – but few [...]

Another London Walk

Well, here we go again down the rabbit hole of the London I only thought I knew so well! This time we headed down to Trafalgar Square for the upcoming St George’s Day celebrations – the square has been turned into – well, a garden would be stretching it, but there were plenty of plants [...]

On The Page

I don’t normally notify you about this kind of stuff, but I’m having a bit of a PR-spike this week (tell you why on Monday). At the moment there are new interviews in Mass Movement magazine here and in the upcoming issue of Black Static, in which Peter Tennant reviews my latest books and runs [...]