Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 523

Go On, Get It Out Of Your System

Portrait Of The Writer As A Young Twat

That's right, have a good laugh, then calm down and behave. I am wearing a fire engine red Tommy Nutter suit made for George 'Inspector Wexford' Baker, who gave it to me. The lady is my friend Avis, who once worked for Hertz. I wish I was [...:]

Bits Of London That Don't Change: Kingly Street

My picture shows Kingly Street, just behind Liberty's, on a hot summer's day in 1909…
Nah, I'm lying. I took it this morning on my iPhone and just whacked some sepia on it. Kingly Street doesn't change that much – I had my 21st birthday party in the Red Lion here, and it was exactly the [...:]

British Character Actors No.7: Irene Handl

'Allo ducks!' Not much of a catchphrase, really, but you can hear her say it. Irene Handl played charladies and spinsters, and was never young; she didn't take to the stage until she was 36. The daughter of a wealthy Austrian banker and an aristocraric Frenchwoman, born in Maida Vale, she wasn't common at all, [...:]

Hidden London: Magic & Ghosts

In the next Bryant & May book, Arthur Bryant reveals his dubious skills as a magician. I feel guilty having mentioned Davenports, the hidden magic shop he visits, when there's another family-run magic shop in London. It's here, the International Magic Shop at 89, Clerkenwell Rd, and is so tiny that you're likely to missing [...:]

Vote In The Author Blog Awards!

I've been shortlisted for the Authors' Blog Awards! You can do me the huge favour of voting if you like this blog, here. Voters get rewards from publishers giving away books, too, and it only takes about 30 seconds to register on the site.

Meanwhile, our Campaign For Real Fear is in triple figures and close [...:]

The Bookshop Manifesto

A good possible side effect of the switch to – sorry, alternative choice – of electronic books. Perhaps it will kill the market for those horrible little gift items you find at the counter that nobody seems to buy.

I'm going to speak for all of us here.

This is what we want.
It's simple, bookstores. We don't [...:]

Yellowjack!

A sweet story in the news today about a yacht called Titanic sinking in the Caribbean. Three crew were rescued after one of them dialled from memory the number of a pal in Wales who serves as a volunteer on the local lifeboat.

With their yacht listing badly, short of power and too far from the [...:]

The End Of Books II

I've been trying to think of things we might lose if and when the 'paper' book market fades away, and remembered this; it's a postcard that fell out of a secondhand book I'd bought in Charing Cross Road a few years back. In another book I found a letter from Ronald Searle to his publisher [...:]

The End Of Books

So, which photo appeals more to you? The one on the left or the one on the right?
Recently I did a panel on teen fiction and someone stood up and said 'You've all been talking about bookshops for an hour without anyone once mentioning online buying. I haven't been in a bookshop in five years, [...:]

The Graverobbers & The Condemned

This is the 12th century church St Sepulchre-Without-Newgate (ie just outside), the largest of the City Of London churches. It's also the musicians' church associated with Sir Henry Wood, founder of the Proms, and features in the rhyme 'Oranges And Lemons', but there are some macabre connections too…long associated with the Newgate prison, its Watch [...:]