Christopher Fowler was almost absurdly prolific, for much of his life combining fiction with a hectic job heading a film promotion company (he wrote the Alien tagline ‘In space no one can hear you scream’). His debut, the horror novel Roofworld, was inspired by the view from the top of his Soho office building. Soho Black took a satirical poke at the film world, while Spanky set a sexy demon loose in London.
More novels, many collections of short stories and three memoirs followed. The millennium saw a switch to crime fiction, with Full Dark House, which introduced his elderly detective duo, Arthur Bryant and John May, of London’s Peculiar Crimes Unit. While outwardly a stylish media maven, deep down Fowler was the eccentric and curmudgeonly Arthur Bryant, combining a profound knowledge of a lost London with a sprightly ability to keep up with every current trend.
I interviewed Fowler for the publication of the final Bryant & May novel, London Bridge is Falling Down, a termination which he was not ready to ascribe publicly to his cancer diagnosis. Even then he confessed there was another book in the pipeline, not a novel but a quirky guide: Bryant & May’s Peculiar London. In subsequent conversations, he idly mentioned he was also working on a historical fantasy novel. And here it is, all 500 pages, almost two years after he died in March 2023. Only death stopped his pen.
In The Foot on the Crown, Fowler returns to his roots in horror fiction. Londinium is a gloomy citadel, not yet a town, the stronghold of an enfeebled dynasty clinging to the remnants of power and pointless rituals. The only hope for the future is the deflowering and impregnation of the 16-year-old princess Giniva. (Heterosexual coupling is regularly described in the basest terms.) The story is clearly a twist on Mervyn Peake’s gothic masterpiece Gormenghast. Giniva’s foppish brother, Leperdandy, fond of theatricals, stands in for the timid young heir Titus Groan, with Gineva as the doomed Fuchsia – though Fowler gives her more agency. The upstart Steerpike is represented by the valiant outsider Watborn.
It’s a grim and death-laden tale, but there is huge narrative energy in the plotting and a vast tapestry of characters. With a final flourish, Fowler neatly dovetails his ribald invention with more conventional myths of English identity, as Londinium transforms from a cloacal prison into a vision of the shining future. The Foot on the Crown caps a dazzling career.
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