I’ve never paid particular attention to Nicholas Hawksmoor’s famous London churches, although I am familiar with some of them. I … More
Category: Fiction
One face in a thousand
In Rhetorics of Fantasy, her important structural taxonomy of fantasy literature, Farah Mendlesohn identifies four key types of fantasy, defined … More
Worlds and authorities
I was spurred by the recent BBC TV adaptation of Northern Lights to re-read Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, … More
The magic of the real
My introduction to fantasy fiction was The Lord of the Rings, which I encountered surprisingly early, while visiting a friend … More
Energy and entertainment
My long-interrupted project to read or re-read all of Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion books has at last been resumed, after … More
A trajectory
General relativity tells us something enticing about time. It doesn’t tell us what many would like it to tell us, … More
For the readers
There’s something wonderful about being immersed in the world of a book, something which for me is even more pronounced … More
Veils of allusion
Iain Sinclair walks London’s sacred geometries, pursuing a dérive that moves obliquely across the familiar, prosaic territories of the city. … More
Ruthlessly imagined
It’s very unusual for me to read a recently published novel, much less a prize-winning one. This is mainly because … More
Impossible speech
I have a pet theory. I would like to articulate it eventually through a scholarly monograph, but for the moment … More
Migratory death-drives
Emigration seems to offer a fresh start, a blank slate; this is often what is hoped for by those that … More
A few wooden buildings
Places have memories. This is not to propose the pathetic fallacy that they have feelings, consciousness, thoughts or intentions, but … More
The book closed, the world continues
The best speculative fiction, particularly of the secondary-world variety, immerses its readers in its setting, often in initially quite baffling … More
A cautionary elegy
William Boyd thinks that The Radetzky March is ‘one of the enduring monuments of twentieth-century European literature’; I’d never heard … More