Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 456

Re: View – 'Four Lions'

I've never been a fan of Chris Morris's. All that self-consciously naughty 'subversive' TV strikes me as the bottom-waggling of a disgruntled trustafarian trying to shock his mum and dad, just as Lindsay Anderson used to do before him. But I gave 'Four Lions' a try, and was very pleasantly surprised.

Probably not the reaction sought [...]

Hidden London: The Crossbones Memorial

Move along, there's nothing to see.

No, really – there isn't. I tried taking a picture and it looked so manky I'm not posting it. But on a bit of wasteland owned by LT in Southwark there are more than 15,000 bodies buried by the order of the Sheriff of London. It's Unhallowed Ground, and the [...]

The Mysteries Of London 2

As if to make the point about London's mysteries even clearer, this gigantic noticeboard has appeared overnight in a backroad of King's Cross, revealing some of the area's secrets and incidentally providing all the clues you need to unravel the puzzle of 'Bryant & May Off The Rails'.

As a consequence I deliberately avoided photographing [...]

The Mysteries Of London

Thinking about books on London (367,982 this morning, on Amazon UK alone) one of the problems is that as soon as you've conquered an area, new things are found in it, changing your perceptions again.

I've just discovered a Secret Cinema club has been operating here for years, two streets away (this week, John Wayne [...]

Bryant & May Website Launches Next Monday

The huge team of geniuses who toil ceaselessly to bring you tip-top bits and bobs about life, the universe and elderly detectives in London (me and Simon, the site's designer) have had a pow-wow about the interweb and the way you use it. We'll be looking at the structure of this site (where readers mainly [...]

Early Influences 2: National Lampoon

When Mad grew tame I went to DC comics, then Marvel Comics (tougher), then underground comix (darker, ruder), then National Lampoon, which grew out of the Harvard Lampoon and became a powerhouse of intelligent satire at a time when the USA needed an opposing voice.

National Lampoon parodied the presidencies through Vietnam, Kent State, Spiro Agnew, [...]

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

A few years ago I wrote a story called 'Inner Fire', in which the Gulf Stream stopped and England froze solid. This scenario was suggested by scientists investigating global warming.

Well, now there's a small but excellent new exhibition at the Museum Of London from Robert Graves and Didier Madoc-Jones, showing London's possible futures. It [...]

Take Me To Dinner

Come on then, what's that thing on the left? If you said a glazed tangerine you'd be cold. Now if I tell you it's in Heston Blumenthal's new restaurant, Dinner, have another guess.

Erm, ell, it's meat. You break the mandarin jelly skin and biter into chicken liver parfait. It come from around 1500, and all [...]

Early Influences 1: Mad Magazine

As the dominant English-speaking country in the world at the time, the USA had a big influence on me (and I imagine most writers of my age) as a kid. America seems to fit adolescent aspirations; big, brash and exciting, it's not until later that we discover the subtler charms of Europe. One of the [...]

Even More London Books

The Londonist has picked up on my London book choices and has augmented with a very nice list of their own top London books.Surprisingly, they've missed off one of the best – 'Underground London' by Stephen Smith.

London the Encyclopaedia, Christopher Hibbert, et al.
Night Haunts, Sukhdev Sandhu
London the Biography, Peter Ackroyd
Lights Out for the [...]