Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 513

WWW = Writers Without Websites

Recently I've done a few panels – the latest was in a library, where I was sent by the publisher along with three other authors, and the audience consisted of about ten old ladies, mostly retired teachers. This is not unusual at all, and does seem anachronistic. After we talk about the selected topic, I [...:]

The Effort Of Reading

Since the launch of Ether, the iPhone app that lets customers download short stories and other short works onto their phone, publishers and PR have been quick to point out how easy it is to have a coffee, sit down and read a story. 'But', argues Anna Goodall in the Independent, 'it's already easy to [...:]

London's Lost Buildings

London has been both lucky and unlucky in its architecture. Lucky because fires and bombs wiped away its slums, forcing governments to renew, and unlucky because town planners destroyed much that was good (in the 1960s more intact buildings were destroyed than were lost in the Blitz). Look, if you will, at this hopelessly drippy [...:]

Hidden London: No.1 Poultry

There's a very nice roof garden on top of No1 Poultry with colonnades, and lawns built disconcertingly on arms that stick out over the street (a city trader recently threw himself off one). There's also a very expensive, hideously vulgar restaurant on the roof filled with drunk WAGs and shouty city boys which you should [...:]

Hidden London: The Roof Gardens

How could I have missed this out? Mainly because although I used to go there every Sunday night for years when it was cheap and fun, it was subsequently taken over by Richard Branson and adopted such a complicated and pricey door policy that it fell off my radar. Located one hundred feet above Kensington [...:]

Pink Elephants On Parade

Not just pink ones, either. If you've been in London the last few days, you can't have missed them; in the largest open-air sculpture display ever mounted, two hundred and sixty brightly painted life-sized baby elephants have appeared across the city. It's part of an innovative campaign to save the endangered Asian elephant. The Elephant [...:]

Re:View – 'Enron'

Lucy Prebble's 'Enron', now playing at the West End's Noel Coward Theatre, has, unsurprisingly, opened to mixed reviews in the US after being declared a smash here. A clue to why can be found in the fact that Prebble was writing the play before Enron's collapse, and the company provided a perfect peg for her [...:]

Fashions: A Matter Of Class

In post-war years, young fashions were largely created by the children of the rich. Teddy Boys got their names from the New Edwardians. Punk was famously a fashion born of class conflict, but ended up becoming a commodity sold off in portions to high school kids who wished to appear rebellious. (One of the [...:]

The Worst English Fantasy…

…is thinking we still have a film industry. In the last quarter century I've met a great many students with good degrees in media studies who have dreams of making films here. If they're directors they make a short, or make one feature, and then go into low-end TV. I remember bumping into a very [...:]

Foreign Territory?

My pictures show Castle Combe and Torbay, and will be less familiar to Londoners than Americans. Let me explain.

I make a big deal out of being a Londoner, but there are downsides – nobody in my family (that I'm still speaking to, after the revelations in 'Paperboy', anyway) lives in the countryside. My brother lives [...:]