Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 38

My Favourite Books About Dickens

Writing about Charles Dickens is almost as big an industry as books venerating the Brontë sisters. Every age takes an appropriate critical view that chimes with current obsessions, but where, say, Jane Austen unites critics in worship, Dickens divides for the simple reason that he is so profligate with contrary opinions that it’s possible to […]

London Life

I have quite a few London books, a couple going back to the middle of the 19th century. Via these volumes you can see the coverage of our fair city reduce from lengthy chapters to key points – the more obscure legends and stories disappear just as the streets themselves vanish, and we are left […]

Are Bryant & May Books Hard To Read?

A chance remark from a friend has thrown me. Through him I gave a middle-aged Australian lady a copy of ‘Bryant & May: The Lonely Hour’. She had complained that she’d used up her Lockdown books and was looking for something new. My friend later explained that she hadn’t got on with it, and had […]

Lights! Camera! Euro-Action!

Because of my connections to various organisations I’ve always been able to see a lot of the world cinema that doesn’t open in local overseas arthouses. These are the bread-and-butter indigenous movies that fill Saturday night screens and are likely to be regional, certainly not intended for international exhibition. A few years back, ‘Welcome To […]

Wherever You Can, Whenever You Can

A dear friend tells me he is writing a cycle of seven books. He has never written longform before and shows no inclination to do so. He’s decided to start his career with a world-and-ages-spanning epic that has a vast cast of intergalactic characters. He says he’s just waiting for the right time to start, […]

Life In The Slow Lane

Lockdown is clearly over in people’s minds. These are the lovely students of King’s Cross living on the BOMAD in sumptuous flats their folks will flip the second they’ve all finished their degrees in advanced macramé. They’re phantom residents as invisible to us as tourists. The stars of the Great Pause have been the enterprising […]

When The Past Comes Down

Here the wearing of a mask is not a political act (Today’s diatribe was inspired by watching statues toppled in Bristol and on university campuses.) Growing up in Greenwich, South London, I would walk past the statue of General James Wolfe without even noticing it. So many ubiquitous statues of lauded military figures had been […]

The Thread Of The Tapestry

In every magazine about writing the question comes up with dispiriting regularity; where do you get your ideas from? And every answer must be different. For me it’s not a spark, an image or a snippet of dialogue that sets me off on the trail of a new story. It’s a twist of thread with […]

The Book Keeping Test

When I was a child I believed that all books had to be read to the end. I’m surprised that this determination to plough on with, say, ‘Travels on a Donkey’ didn’t put me off reading for life. Now I keep a living library built on a one-out-one-in basis because I don’t have room for […]

The Lockdown Library Is Now Closing

As our poll-obsessed premier continues to loosen Lockdown I find my own fate inextricably blurred with the pandemic. After testing clear for COVID last week I am now venturing out on sorties (one to a vast, deserted supermarket, one to the canal and back), each a minor stroll, now both like climbing the North face […]