Monthly Archives: December 2008

As a musical antidote to a year of retro-pop and talent show tat let’s go back about ooh, 121 years and hear something really silly. (Although it’s harder than it looks – try hitting the Karaoke lyrics on cue) Happy New Year!

In no particular order; White middle-class authors complaining that they feel as if they are in a minority and are being discriminated against. Try this; grow up and write better. Private members’ clubs filled with demented screaming media folk with ironically flattened hair. (They usually have faux-fifties wallpaper and offer comfort food at prices that […]

From Whistler to Wilde, from Augustus John to Aubrey Beardsley, through sips of absinthe and clouds of cigar smoke, the Cafe Royal in Regent Street played host to London’s artistic elite. But after years of slow decline it’s going, to be turned into yet another upmarket hotel. Its furniture goes under the hammer on January […]

Back in the 1980s (and again in the 90s) I did some marketing work on Richard Williams’ unfinished masterpiece ‘The Thief And The Cobbler’, probably the greatest animated film never to see the light of day in its intended form. The problem was that the film – based on Persian miniatures and the writings of […]

Yes, I said there would be six novels, and yes, I planned the series accordingly, hiding little tricks and clues in the books to point the way to other volumes. However… The new books have a little twist of their own. The series is going to continue for a while because I have more tales […]

This illustration was produced by Michael Nicholson for the BBC, with the excellent Hannah Gordon reading an abbreviated version of my Sherlock Holmes story ‘The Lady Downstairs, click here.