Monthly Archives: May 2019

(No spoilers) With the end just a stone’s throw away, it was time to stow the thrones. Watched in 170 countries, winner of the most American awards, it wasn’t the biggest US TV show ever (that honour belongs to M*A*S*H), but Game of Thrones acquitted itself well in the audience stakes. It concluded tidily after […]

Ploughing through far too many books on London and trying to work out which ones to take with me to Barcelona, where I’ll be working in seclusion next week, I can’t help but stare at photographs that touch me in some way. A lot of people complain that we have an idealised view of London […]

When it comes to sung classics I’m relentlessly middlebrow. Give me Offenbach or Donizetti over Wagner any day, or Gilbert & Sullivan, although I have a soft spot for most Verdi except ‘Aida’. Despite all efforts to democratise it, opera remains relentlessly upper class, and therefore periodically deserves to be mocked. There are past pieces […]

A friend of mine recently moved into Petticoat Lane without realising it. It’s not her fault; the lane doesn’t technically exist. Petticoat Lane Market was started over 400 years ago by the French Huguenots who sold petticoats and lace from the stalls (there are still lace sellers there). The prudish Victorians changed the name of […]

Why? Because I’m hard at work on the next Bryant & May novel, and can’t spend 3 hours on the blog this morning! Besides, the glorious weather has returned to its dismal grey state and we might need something to cheer us up. So there’s that. And this. Richard Thomas and Stewart Lee not only […]

Still poking about in old London photographs, I’ve a few more choice shots from the city’s past. Alfred Gilbert’s statue of Anteros (god of requited love) has been moved about a lot since it arrived on top of the fountain in Piccadilly Circus in 1893. Eros is Anteros’s twin brother, and that’s the name chosen […]

When it comes to self-help books, there’s no category trickier than the creative writing category. There’s no quick fix for bad writing other than to keep on until it gets less bad. Similarly, idea-creation cannot be taught, so all those boxes of flashcards can be thrown out of the window. There’s no single system that […]

While I was researching today I came across some peculiar photographs of Londoners worth sharing. In East London in 1934 there was concern that babies weren’t getting enough fresh air and sunshine, so south-facing ‘baby balconies’ were installed until the London County Council (LCC) stopped them on safety grounds. The UK has a long, strong […]

‘Don’t get too political,’ is a classic writing rule. Readers are also voters of every hue, and you risk offending them. But if you’re going to write a crime novel set in modern-day Britain, you have to at least touch on ordinary life around you to set the story in context. If you overdo it, […]

Once we had an image of the Victorian lady author, a person of gentility and slender means, seated at her escritoire quietly at work on a sensation-novel. It was a job opportunity open to those who did not become tutors or lady’s companions, the spinsters’ choice. Well, it turns out things haven’t moved that far […]