Who Would Win

Yesterday I sent Sean Twist the proposal for my latest book idea called Who Would Win. I had put the proposal together quickly over the weekend after an editor picked up on something I said when machine-gunning ideas around. Today Twist sent an email pointing out that not only am I ‘certifiably insane’, but that the pitch is: ‘a brilliant idea’.

Today, 10 minutes after being sent the four-age proposal and two sample spreads, my potential new editor sent me the following email: ‘Looks great, reads really well. I'm going to push to get this into work soon. How much you want to write it?’

All this unexpected praise for a book I do not particularly want to write.

Now I know that sounds like the usual bout of author whining, but there are many books I do want to write. I want to write books combining travel and the exploration of secret history, travel and the exploration of folklore. I want to write a biography of the indole alkaloid ibogaine, a biography of Luke Haines. From Sherlock Holmes XIII to The Far Lands, there are a couple of novels gestating in me that I would love the chance to deliver to a publisher.

However, at the moment the only book a publisher seems to want from me is a ‘funny book’. I know I have said in the past that the only ‘funny book’ I wanted to write was ‘Who would win a fight between Mahatma Ghandi vs. Mother Teresa?’ It is just that now there is a real possibility someone will pay me to write that exact tome, I am doubtful about bashing it out. I am just not convinced I can do 200 or more pages of droll.

I will readily admit I get a mild buzz out of the proposed book’s central concept and with the right co-author it could actually be quite enjoyable to write. There is also the fact I could do with some funding right now. Of course, when the potential editor says: ‘How much do you want to write it?’ what he really means is: ‘Ask whatever you want, at most we will only offer you enough to pay the rent for three months.’ There is possibility of agent involvement in the negotiation to make things more equitable, but at the end of the day the size of any fee will not decide the issue. The real question is whether I want to do something that merely entertains or should hold out for a deal to publish a book I actually feel is a good use of trees.

Pure, Liquid Madness

I have just discovered that one of my books is being sold for between £162-£199 second-hand on Amazon. I am rarely left bewildered by the greed of some booksellers, but £199.48 for one of my old books? Madness. Pure, liquid madness.

However, as an author, what can you do when some avaricious and deluded soul attempts to sell one of your old books at a clearly insane price? I figure all I can do is offer one of my own copies of the book for sale on Amazon and put the following in the description panel:

‘Buy a brand new, signed copy direct from the author who will inscribe the book in any way you wish. Dispatched from the UK within 24 hours of purchase by first-class Royal Mail post.

Seriously, as the author of Conspiracy Theories: Real-life Stories of Paranoia, Secrecy and Intrigue (Paperback) for £162.86 I will not only sell you a signed copy of the book, I will take you to one of my drinking haunts in London for a cocktail before heading over to my favourite Indian restaurant where I will buy you dinner and do my best to keep you entertained for a couple of hours. Alternatively, for £162.86 I might deliver a lecture on any of the material in the book to any audience you care to gather, sell you my own annotated copy and give you some of my hand-written notes made during the researching of the work.

With the above offers available, you would be mad to buy a ridiculously overpriced copy of Conspiracy Theories: Real-life Stories of Paranoia, Secrecy and Intrigue (Paperback) from other sellers on Amazon.

David Southwell’

I did not even want to say what I could possibly be persuaded to do for £199.48.

The Oncoming Legal Storm

I am sorry for the recent silence. When you are writing 16 hours per day on a book, there is not much lexical spare capacity. Anyway, the book is now done and I can return to blogging. I might even post some entries covering events of the last week such as attending the John Pilger première and one of my informant’s reports of Dame BS shenanigans.

Of course what I mean by 'the book is now done’ is that I have written the text for it, selected the pictures and emailed it my editor. The whole set of other processes have to be gone through before I can really say I have finished work on it. Amongst these jobs will be the inevitable discussions about tonality issues with my editor. I do not mind this. An editor who is at least thinking about the tone of a book beats some of the naff font jockeys I have worked with in the past.

I also do not mind sweating over the captions and acknowledgements. The one thing I am dreading is the oncoming legal storm. The turnip-headed legalists who plague my creative existence will no doubt make my life miserable once they see the text for the new Conspiracy Files.

Both the publisher’s in-house lawyers and the expensive libel specialists will display vast caution and a total lack of commonsense. I already know some of their emails will make me want to cry with frustration. We will clash about what constitutes fair comment. We will clash over whether we can call someone a ‘little Hitler’ given they have already lost a libel case over that phrase. Voices will be raised over how upset the Attorney General would really be if I mentioned the names of a two pathologists. Two weeks of my life will disappear in trying to resolve our differences.

However, until then I have a few days to recover the use of my atrophied muscles and find solutions to some pressing worries regarding Nanna. I will also be able to do some fun things before the tempest hits. Blogging and celebrating Surreal Girl’s birthday are top of the list.

The War On Democracy

John Pilger has always been one of my heroes. He has always been brave, always told ‘the filthy truth’. However, I am not deaf to all the criticism directed towards him. His books have often been stronger than his documentaries. Some of his films overwhelm with a sense that the gravity of their conclusion has warped everything he tells and shows you. That is fine for polemical pieces, but sometimes partiality ends up being a barrier. I have a knee-jerk reaction against believing anything that smacks of propaganda – even if it is cheerleading for a cause I believe in.

Yet the best of Pilger’s work – books such as Hidden Agendas and documentaries like Quiet Mutiny, Year Zero or Death Of A Nation – offer up a perspective once revealed you cannot dismiss. Pilger might use shock to get you to look at the truth, but it stays with you because he backs it up with unchallengeable fact. Taken as a whole, his body of work is amongst that which helps give the field of journalism nobility.

Therefore I was quite excited when Surreal Girl announced she had got us tickets for the world première of his new film The War On Democracy at the NFT. The best bit of the news was Pilger was going to attend and introduce it. Given it is his first feature-length documentary, I was expecting great things of both the film and the chance to hear him speak again.

To say John Pilger’s introduction was disappointing would be like announcing ingesting Polonium-210 is bad for your health. We expected a 20-minute lecture and then a Q&A. He spoke for less than three minutes; dropped his notes and forgot that for people to hear you, holding the microphone towards you is actually useful. At points, he held forth with all the rambling coherence of a gin-soaked tramp or Gwyneth Paltrow accepting an Oscar. However, he did manage to get out a killer line on his aim for the film: “To challenge the tsunami of propaganda lulling us into passivity.”

It is a grand aim. One I wholeheartedly support. I am just fairly certain the best way of confronting the forces thriving on people’s passivity is not by producing a paean of praise to Hugo Chavez. At it’s worst, that it what The War On Democracy feels like. The popular movements behind Chavez in Venezuela and Evo Morales in Bolivia are important, yet they sometimes seemed secondary to the Chavez cult of personality as over-exposed in the documentary.

At it’s best, The War On Democracy works as neat dissection of US foreign policy and quick a flash through some of the dirtier elements of CIA action in its ‘backyard’. It astonishes with footage revealing the truth behind the Venezuelan coup of 2002 and panoramic shots of revealing the scope of favelas. It brings tears to eye when Pilger talks to Sara de Witt who survived one of General Pinochet’s torture houses and the American nun, Dianna Ortiz, who was tortured and gang-raped by the Guatemalan secret police and one of their US handlers.

For all of emotional punches it managed to land, I found The War On Democracy annoying at times. I could not understand why a journalist as bloody good as Pilger failed to ask E. Howard Hunt and Duanne Clarridge any truly difficult questions. Instead he did the Michael Moore trick of making the clever and dangerous look foolish. Whatever else they are, Hunt and Clarridge are not clowns.

When the credits rolled and the applause started, Surreal Girl leaned over and said: “Oh this will change the world won’t it? A bunch of trendy, middle class left-wingers clapping at the NFT.” This made me chuckle a lot more than any of Pilger’s failed stabs at Moore-like wit had. As Surreal Girl also pointed out, Pilger does seem to have something of a humour deficit.

Afterwards, drinking Guinness in NFT bar with acquaintances of Surreal Girl, my disappointment with The War On Democracy softened somewhat. It is easy for me to forget not everyone knows as much about CIA dirty wars as I do, not everyone has at least a glancing knowledge of the last 50 years of worth of coups in South America. If Pilger wanted to help people in the West peer behind the propaganda cloak, to make people think about role of United States in subverting democracy, then he will probably achieve that with this film. However, I am not sure The War On Democracy is going to reach out much beyond the usual ‘trendy, middle class left-wingers’.

As we left the bar and wandered down to the Wagamamas on the South Bank, three things echoed through my mind. First, the film’s tagline – ‘Never believe anything until it is officially denied’ – was something I wish I had thought of for Secrets & Lies. Second, Pilger had wasted a massive opportunity with Hunt as it was one of his last ever interviews (he did not even mention Hunt’s possible role in killing JFK). Thirdly, it is a good thing to see your heroes in the type of shambolic and bumbling light you know shines on you all of the time. After tonight, I can now at least allow myself the possibility I handle a microphone better than one of journalism’s all-time greats.

Green Nazis

I have made the first self-imposed cut to the new material I am writing for the update of Conspiracy Files. Given every entry is going to lead to bloody trench warfare with the publisher’s lawyers, I have decided to not even attempt to try and get the following passage from the Marc Dutroux entry passed them:

GREEN NAZIS
It is alleged Jean Michel Nihoul was involved with running a fringe political group in the 1980s which mixed New Age pseudo-philosophy and extreme green ideas. Some of its members later became associated with underground European fascist groups and radical ecology organizations advocating the culling of humanity to save the planet. When some investigators began to find links to former associates of Nihoul and rising right-wing politicians such as Netherland’s Pim Fortuyn (assassinated in 2002) they speculated that any conspiracy in the Dutroux affair may have a ‘Green Nazi’ facet.

This is the shame. You do just not see the phrase ‘Green Nazi’ in print nearly enough for my liking.

All Absurdly Quaint and yet Absolutely Wonderful

I am ridiculously English. This is an inescapable fact – just ask anyone who knows me. Village and church fetes are also ridiculously English. In my childhood, being dragged to them was so unavoidable it was not worth putting any effort into resisting the annual trips to vicarage gardens and school playing fields where they tended to be held. The one time I did manage to get out of going to one, my brother somehow managed to win a lamb. I was exceptionally jealous and have had a lot more time for the possibilities thrown up by fetes ever since.

Given I live in central London, village fetes are somewhat thin on the ground. However, while my little patch may lack tombolas and Maypoles on the village green, it more than make this with its own version of a traditional fete – the Canalway Cavalcade.

Living in the environs of the Regent’s Canal, I am used to site of assorted narrowboats gently chugging passed their permanently moored sisters now serving as eccentric homes and offices. Yet on the May Day Bank Holiday weekend, the area known as Little Venice becomes flooded with boats from all over the country. This year, everything from working freight barges to floating retirement homes decked out in the habitual, absurdly floral folk art used to decorate canal boats, started mooring up on the Thursday night. By the end of Friday, more than 150 assorted craft, mostly traditional narrowboats, had gathered for the floating festival.

Part boat rally, part mild-TAZ with the added trappings customary to an rural English fete, the area is turned into both a tourist attraction and a temporary community for boaters. Stalls pack the canal bank. The real ale tent jostles for space with the pitch for Punch and Judy show. There are no lambs to be won, but the tombola offers tins of beer among its prizes if you pay your money and take a gamble in aid of the campaign against the British government’s current barbaric attack on England’s canals. Dixieland jazz is played from the floating platform next to Browning Island. Polyphonic improvisation rolling out across the water to dance in the sunshine with the happy chatter of the towpath crowds.

Christians who usually tour the waterways of England proselytising run a Wheel of Hope game of chance and tract distribution racket next to a white elephant stall raising funds for Camden’s Pirate Club. The gut-punching aroma of a whole pig being roasted floats in the air while you navigate your way through crowds sifting through countless tables selling craft items made by boaters. Herb plant sellers stand next to local historian hawking his wares. Every child seems to carry a balloon or a sticky treat. It is all absurdly quaint and yet absolutely wonderful.

During the times when the canals were the thriving arteries supplying the oxygen that allowed English industry to flame and flourish, the canal folk drifted apart from those tied to the land. They developed not only their own argot, but also a free-floating culture. I used to think the only remnants of this were the twee and largely faux decorative style. However, the Canal Cavalcade has made me reassess my knee-jerk dismissal of a continuation of this waterborne heritage. A lot of boats were clearly owned by those choosing to live off the grid with alternative lifestyles going beyond making a living as travelling puppeteers-come-Reiki-healers. Many of the craft belonged to retired couples, refusing to stay in one place and let autumnal decay take hold.

This year the Cavalcade also had an underlying political message. The waterways of England could be used to combat congestion and carbon emissions, yet the Government department responsible for them – the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) – is slashing the budget that maintains them. Many of the boaters are not your typical political activists, but everywhere I looked, I saw them taking the time to passionately tell anyone on the towpath who would listen about what the proposed DEFRA cuts could mean to the future of the canals and their way of life. This is everyday politics, widely ignored but resonant beyond just those at the immediate wrong end of these atrocious DEFRA plans. The waterways are pretty much our last nationalised resource and New Labour seems bent on destroying it.*

The highlight of the Cavalcade for me was last night’s procession of illuminated boats. Surreal Girl has known me for six years, but even she has rarely seen me exhibit such childlike glee as I displayed on the blue bridge. As craft painted with hundreds of points of light and colour came down the canal towards the pool of Little Venice, I was cheering along with the thousand or so others gathered to watch. I oohed as one boat came towards us, at its prow a man swinging great chains of fire. Clapped as another did the canal boat equivalent of a handbrake turn, spinning on the black water to reveal each of its glorious illuminated sides. A huge part of the joy was just knowing that everyone else had bothered to come out on a cool night to see something so simple yet so enchanting.

My favourite entry in the procession was spun with innumerable white lights, creating the effect of waves running across its surface supporting a model Avalonian boat perched on the cabin. As it glided under the bridge, the reassuring chug of engine echoing against Victorian brickwork, I felt like I was sharing in a blissful mass hallucination. My little bit of London had never felt so of England and yet so touched by something akin to the glamour of fairyland.

I do not have to tell any follower of English Hoodoo that the word fete originally meant festival or feast. It may call itself a cavalcade, but my local floating fete is a sustaining feast for the imagination, showing how the city can be made anew through the simple celebration of shared purpose. Sometimes it is bloody grand to live around here.



*If you want to know how to protest against this, email me.

An Experiment

As an experiment, I am running ads on the blog purely to see who the advertisers are. I am hoping for suppliers of green crayons.

Do not worry. I am sure the HTML Fairy can remove them after a couple of days.

Primate Positions

English Dreaming, English Rain has never featured adverts. I do not even really attempt to promote my own work through it. You can ascribe this to either lack of business acumen or a writer’s empathy for his audience. I know how much adverts annoy me when I reading my favourite blogs.

Besides, who would be an appropriate advertiser? A seller of Luke Haines rarities? A bookshop specialising in Iain Sinclair, Ken MacLeod and Alan Moore? A provider of green crayons?

However, I find myself in growing need of Web Monkey and an additional Junior Research Monkey. It strikes me that if I do not start the search by advertising these positions here I am missing a trick. The responsibility of these primate positions is as follows:

Web Monkey – to assist in making any aspect of my web presence look better that the HTML Fairy is too busy to help with.

Junior Research Monkey – to assist in the occasional bit of bizarre and seemingly pointless research answering questions such as ‘Who is Robert Vaughn’s current agent?’ and ‘Can you get me contact details for all the mental asylums in Iceland’.

As an employed monkey, your wages will paid in peanuts, a universal currency that can be converted into free books, mentions in acknowledgements, invites if I ever hold a launch party and the vague promise of a curry. If I ever form a publishing co-op, you can exchange your peanuts for scrip dividends. To apply for either job, drop me an email.

The Literary Equivalent of the Weird Kid in the Corner

I do not hang out with authors much. In terms of writers who are friends, well there are Tim and Mr. C. I have known both for nearly two decades – long before I was published. As for Mr. Grasso, he was a Wolf Parlour companion years prior to his name being in print. There are one or two others I will have the occasional drink with, but in general, I do not hang out with authors much. I am not into bragging or bitching about book sales. I do not care about comparing reviews and I do not even do launch parties. I am the literary equivalent of the weird kid in the corner at school. It is no wonder I am a Billy no-author-mates.

This state of affairs may not be such an awful thing. Most authors – myself included – are actually rather dull. Those that are not boring or vapid, tend to be monstrously self-obsessed, somewhat tyrannical and ridiculously poncey. I am not going to mention any names, but I am speaking from battle-scarred experience when I say a lot of writers are terrible shites.

Therefore it is a bit of a novelty for me to travel up country and spend 24 hours staying with a novelist. In everyday conversation I do not get to use phrases such as 'narrative thrust', 'fuckwit publishers' and 'way too obvious deus ex machina'. It is rare luxury to be able to think aloud: 'There is a book in that…' with a professional peer I respect enough to spitfire any bad idea before I get too attached to it.

Given this, I drunk every drop of joy from my visit to a friend, novelist and publisher in the area of the old Pyrehill Hundred. My last visit to their home was almost a decade ago. It was still as wonderfully welcoming and decadently Victorian gothic as I remembered. My fresh invite was partly down to some writer business, partly down to the fact that in the post-Anne-Marie landscape of my life it is no longer a crime to have female friends.

The 'writer business' was the slim chance that I might be able to offer some help my friend with a book they were contracted to deliver. Now I am a difficult man to flatter. I know my faults and failings far too well. However, having an established author ask for my assistance on a novel was always going to charm this non-fiction boy away from his own desk.

Having been arrogant enough to tell someone who has written more than 20 books how I would remix and re-master their material to create the required sequel, the rest of the day was spent drinking tea, munching on German chocolate and feasting on fabulous lasagna. As the evening came down, more tea was drunk, movies were watched and gossip devoured*. As the new day started, much magical malarkey and quantum strangeness was discussed.

About 2:30am I retired to bed to read (one of the pleasures of staying with a writer is you are guaranteed a library of a few thousand books to browse) while my friend worked till 5:30am. At 8am I got up, investigated the walk-in pantry that was bigger than most B&B bedrooms and sorted out my morning fix of Rosie. Until the afternoon, my only company was the eight cats of the house.

I had forgotten how wonderful it was to have a cat on your lap while writing. It may sound a little Blofeld, but what you lose in terms of words-per-minute typing efficiency, you gain in terms of a sense of fundamental well-being. By 2pm I had written 3,500 words of skeleton plot and notes for my friend to use. It might be an unconventional form of houseguest gift, but each according to their abilities.

The ride home was glorious blur of canal boats, stone bridges and fields glimpsed from the train window. I crossed the edges of the ancient kingdom of Mercia lost in the investigation of books I had been given. SMS messages from Surreal Girl, the anticipation of greetings at Euston and the prospect of a welcome home plate of satay chicken made even made the post-Luton stretch of the jouney joyful.

I do not hang out with authors much. Many writers are terrible shites and I am probably better off being Billy no-author-mates. However, I am bloody lucky that the few authors I do spend time with are grand people endowed with generous spirits and a fine line in conversation. You can not expect much more from the looser members of your running tribe. Their friendship is a blessing.



*The main news was that one of my absolute literary heroes – Ken MacLeod – is a thoroughly wonderful chap in the flesh.

'Monty Python is mocking, but there are those that are not laughing’

This morning when I switched on, the Inbox contained scans of my appearance in Vikend, a Slovenian publication with a circulation of 232,000 which is part of both Delo* and Slovenske novice. They gave me a spread, which I find a rather bizarre.

It certainly presents something of an odd sight. For a start, there I am on the blue bridge, hair flowing and looking mildly aggressive in one of Nicola’s publicity shots from last summer. Below me are photos of a Masonic handshake and the reverse of the Great Seals of the United States as seen on a one-dollar bill.

My Slovenian is restricted to ordering beers and a bit of swearing, but it appears a vague translation of the headline running across two pages is: 'Monty Python is mocking, but there are those that are not laughing’. Dosjeji zarot gets name-checked and if Mladinska knjiga had any decency they would owe me a favour for the mention they get.

There is also another of Nicola’s pictures – me sitting on the steps of a barge – used on the index page. This leads to nice coincidence of me in an eyepatch and wearing a black Captain America T-shirt positioned next to a shot of Toby Maguire in the black Spiderman costume. It looks like a piece of skilled Marvel product placement.

The email that accompanied the scans contained the line: ‘Sorry I could not get you on the cover, Spiderman is a tough one to beat!’ As if I would mind not getting a cover when Spidey in black is around. They certainly know how to tickle a meejah hor in Ljubljana.



*This reminds me of the old saying from the former Yugsalvia that in terms of the leading papers the Slovenes prefer work (Delo), Serbs politics (Politika) and Montenegrins warfare (Pobjeda – victory).

The New Conspiracy Files

It is official. I am now working on an update of Conspiracy Files. This news will horrify anyone who wants me to work for a ‘publisher that pays the talent fairly’ or see me produce a novel. When those conspiracy buffs that are fans of my work actually get to read the new book, they might be horrified as well.

I have decided to tackle head-on some of the flawed conjectures often considered as sacred tenets by the conspiriologist community. Given this may be my last traditional conspiracy book, certain things have to be said. The time has come to talk about the Okhrana origins of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This is the work where I can no longer dodge discussing Lyndon LaRouche Jnr. or David Icke.

When the new Conspiracy Files is published, hate mail and letters from the green crayon brigade are bound to find me fast. The jade missives are guaranteed to be virulent if the lawyers let me print half of what I want to say. However, I just hope the GBC are all I have to worry about after I have written about one of my former sources – Alexander Litvinenko.

Among the pictures I have requested for the new book are: ‘An illustration of the ancient god Moloch’, ‘A snap of Jeremiah Duggan as a floppy haired student before his murder, preferably the one in a silly striped jumper using one of his hands to shade his eyes’ and ‘The classic photograph of an emaciated, bald Litvinenko dying in his London hospital bed’. Baldness seems to be something of a theme in my photo requests as I also ask for: ‘Shot of bald-headed members of the Manson Family outside the court during his trial’.

Asking for odd pictures goes with covering the territory. I am used to writing up slightly bonkers picture reference lists. However, even I never expected to be requesting either Bryan Hitch Chitauri, Doctor Who Silurians, Buckaroo Banzai Lectroids or a reptilian-humanoid from V as an illustration. Scales are the price you pay for dancing with David Icke.

English Dreaming, English Rain in a Parallel Dimension

‘Three, two, one … You are back in the room.’

I am sorry for the break in transmission. Life has been and continues to be, somewhat problematic. However, from now on I promise to try to post blog entries a lot more regularly, regardless of whatever is happening in the surreal soap opera of my life.

If I had been posting during the last couple of weeks no doubt English Dreaming, English Rain would have covered why Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss (or Dame BS as many parapoliticis researchers call her) really quit the Diana and Dodi inquest. It would probably also have reported of some inside knowledge concerning the Cash for Peerages conspiracy passed to me by a good source in the Metropolitan Police. In terms of not causing extra grief for myself, it may not be such a bad thing those two possible posts did not make it into black, white and red.

Readers of English Dreaming, English Rain in a parallel dimension where I continued posting would have also been treated to seemingly endless angst about my Nanna, the wait for my biopsy results and my problems with publishers. On the upside they would have read about the importance of chips eaten on the beach at Leigh-on-Sea and the joy of walking history in Maida Vale. They would have also suffered an entry about me getting broody.

Anyway, I am back in the blogosphere. My return might be considered good timing given the Operation Crevice trial ended today. In theory this means I should be free from some of the legal restrictions that have prevented me talking about COBRA, the Security Service briefings I was involved with and a certain infamous Sunday Times cover story mentioning MI5 and me. However, I should probably save my powder for another day. Not too surprisingly, I am actually trying to keep out of any further trouble at the moment.