Brought To Book THE SFX AUTHOR INTERVIEW
ALAN MOORE
The legendary writer on the first volume of his Long London quintet
Words by Will Salmon /// Portrait by Joe Brown
TWO YEARS AGO ALAN MOORE PUBLISHED Illuminations, a terrific collection of short stories.
It wasn’t his first literary work, but it seemed to mark the start of a new phase in Moore’s career now that he’s left the world of comics behind for good. When SFX interviewed him about it, he mentioned that he was working on an ambitious sequence of novels to be titled the Long London quintet.
Two years on, the first instalment is here, and it’s every bit as delightful, hilarious and bizarre as you might hope.
The Great When
takes place in 1949 in the bombed-out ruins of the capital, a city still pulling itself together after the war. The book blends fact and fantasy and makes use of a cast of real life London notables, as well as the fictional – and incredibly-named – hero, Dennis Knuckleyard.