Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 459

Shakespeare For The Masses

Savage London is one of those great little London shops you find tucked away in the backstreets (this one is behind Carnaby Street). They just produce stuff that makes you smile. Their current range of Shakespeare For The Masses shirts includes these Sarf London gems. If you've got a good idea for more, they'll make [...]

Come On Chaps, Use Your Imagination

The writer has one main brief – to use his or her imagination in the service of literature. Or in the case of Jeffrey Archer, typing.
So, as a reviewer I look for something that will surprise me with originality of thinking.

Each day I rush (well, stroll) to my front door and check the mail. [...]

You Can Have Too Much Stuff

The downside of celebrity. Sweet.

My Favourite Pointlessly Cool App

It's called Percolator, and what you do is take a photograph, then percolate it through different levels of granularity and shades, creating stunning screensavers.

Here's the regular photo I took on my mobile in Dubai, and a coarse-grain version of the same after processing. There are now so many photo-fiddling apps like this, you need never [...]

Welcome Back, Midland Grand

The Midland Grand Hotel closed in 1935. It had not proven a success. The problem was toilets and bathrooms – this bizarre gothic folly had been built without them. British Rail took over the building and vandalised it to a horrific degree, and then it remained empty while various philistines tried to knock it down. [...]

Twin Globes

The South Bank is going to get a modern replica of the old Blackfriars Theatre, with a roof and seats throughout. Shakespeare's Globe plans to develop an £8m replica of the Jacobean theatre, which closed in 1642, at its site on the capital's South Bank.

This is great news for anyone who's stood there for three [...]

Bryant & May, Rejuvenated!

It was touch and go for a while, but I can now announce that Britain will have not one but two new Bryant and May novels after all.

Volumes 9 and 10 will run just as before, concurrent with US editions, and hopefully there'll be some more terrific covers to make up the set. This [...]

A Really Underground Film Festival

Yesterday was Blue Monday, traditionally the most depressing day of the year. And at this time of the year, London really knows how to do depressing. The streets are dug up. The rain falls. The light fades.Not yesterday though, which was warm and blazing with bright blue skies.

However, to cheer us up with more [...]

Wen & Why?

While I was writing 'The Memory Of Blood', the next Bryant & May book, which opens in the London Dungeon, I looked around at London's other sinister sites. I was disappointed by 'London At War', part of which involves you sitting in a Nissan hut listening to bombs falling – very unimaginative – but remembered [...]

Why I May Shortly Be Suing Hammer

More longstanding fans may remember I wrote a story called 'The Master Builder', in which a young woman finds a too-good-to-be-true apartment and is menaced by someone who is living in the apartment's walls, either her handsome handyman or her boyfriend. It became a TV movie called 'Through The Eyes Of A Killer'.

Now look at [...]