Reading the 20th Century discussion

Wot no Alan Moore thread?




In April 2025 I read The Great When (2024), the first instalment of Alan's The Long London Quintet

I loved it...

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...






The Great When (2024)

by

Alan Moore



From the New York Times bestselling author and legendary storyteller Alan Moore, the first book in an enthralling new fantasy series about murder, magic, and madness in post-WWII London.

Dennis Knuckleyard is a hapless eighteen-year-old who works and lives in a second-hand bookstore. One day, his boss and landlady, Coffin Ada, sends him to retrieve some rare books, one of which, Dennis discovers, should not exist. A London Walk by Rev. Thomas Hampole is a fictitious book that appears in a real novel by another author. Yet A London Walk is physically there in his hands, nonetheless.

Coffin Ada tells Dennis the book comes from the other London, the Great When, a version of the city that is beyond time. In the Great When, epochs blend and realities and unrealities blur, while concepts such as Crime and Poetry are incarnated as wondrous and terrible beings. But, Coffin Ada tells Dennis, if he does not return the book to this other London, he will be killed.

So begins Dennis' adventure in Long London. Delving deep into the city's occult underbelly and tarrying with an eccentric cast of sorcerers, gangsters, and murderers, Dennis finds himself at the center of an explosive series of events that may endanger both Londons.

Mystical, hilarious, and magnificently imagined, The Great When is an unforgettable introduction to the consciousness-altering world of Long London.

I'm now thrilled to be starting the second book





I Hear A New World (2026)

by

Alan Moore



A daringly inventive fantasy novel about murder, mayhem, and magic from New York Times bestselling author and legendary storyteller Alan Moore.

It's 1958 and Dennis Knuckleyard has decided to leave his adventures in the Great When in the past where they belong. For nine years, he's avoided so much as thinking about the magical version of London, until he rediscovers an unpleasant reminder of his last adventure-a key that he'd secretly brought into his own world from the other for safekeeping.

But while Dennis may believe he's done with the Great When, it's far from done with him. When Dennis gives the key to a friend, its magical properties reawaken, bringing creatures from the other world into Dennis's and sparking riots in Notting Hill. Even worse, Dennis's old crush Grace Shilling has been forced into the Great When to investigate strange happenings in both cities.

Desperate to keep Grace safe, Dennis follows her into Long London. But once inside the other city, it will not let him go away again so easily, and Dennis and Grace must fight to set things right in the Great When and their own world, or forever lose their lives-and each other.

Full of Moore's characteristically stunning world building and rollicking prose, I Hear a New World is the extraordinary second adventure in the Long London series.

Alan Moore is using the Long London Quintet to write a five decade secret history of 20th century London, examining how myth, art, and human imagination physically shape the historical reality we inhabit. What's not to love? A perfect RTTC objective too

Needless to say I am loving book 2.


I love the way Alan Moore blends fact and fiction. Early in this book we meet Peter Rachman the notorious 1950s/60s Notting Hill landlord who exploited post-war housing shortages, using intimidation and heavy handed tactics against vulnerable tenants. Michael de Freitas worked alongside Rachman as an enforcer and rent collector in Notting Hill during this period before eventually reinventing himself as Black Power activist Michael X. I’m hoping we get to see this reinvention in this book or the following one.

We’ve now just had the Notting Hill race riots, and then here’s Austin Osman Spare, back again having featured in book 1. As you probably know he’s another real historical figure woven into Alan Moore's fiction. In real life, Spare (1886–1956) was an English artist, illustrator, and influential occultist known for developing systemised sigil magic and automatic drawing

Interesting concept; not unlike what Moore has already done in Jerusalem.
He's obviously written historical fantasy in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series, and is otherwise a veteran of ucronias.

His career has had a similar arc to Gaiman's: both were part of the British invasion of American comic books and wrote pioneering comic series for adults, later moving to novels; but Gaiman's novels have often been for younger readers, while Moore kept the adult bent.

Yes, some parallels with the wonderful Jerusalem


I’d say this series is more accessible

I'm not keen on fantasy, but I read the latest Francis Spufford and liked it, so could be tempted to try this. Thanks for posting about it.

I’m not keen on fantasy either but Alan Moore seems to transcend genres

Joe Meek's turned up now


Just when I thought I Hear A New World couldn't get any better ❤️‍🔥

Here’s the return of "Coffin" Ada Benson and her new hench woman the mute Commotion Venables

The names are such a joy in this series. We’re also reacquainted with Dennis Knuckleyard, the series protagonist, and Grace Shilling his long standing and unrequited love interest

And here’s the return of another real life Soho legend - “Ironfoot Jack” Neave now on his last legs alas


https://share.google/q1lqZCLrptngDyVsq

Loving this book


Also there's recent sightings of...

David Litvinoff (Jumpin Jack Flash: David Litvinoff and the Rock 'n' Roll Underworld -great read BTW)

and

Francis Bacon

The work of Welsh author Arthur Machen (1863–1947) is a recurrent theme in this and the first Long London book


I've not read anything by him

Has anyone here read Arthur Machen?

Any recommendations?


Google tells me (perhaps not wholly accurately)....

Arthur Machen (1863–1947) was a Welsh author, mystic, and journalist whose haunting tales served as a key bridge between late Victorian Gothic horror and modern cosmic dread.

Essential Reading

"The Great God Pan" (1894): His most notorious novella. An experimental brain surgery designed to lift the veil of reality allows a human to perceive the supernatural, unleashing ancient pagan corruption onto Victorian London society. Stephen King famously called it "maybe the best horror story in the English language".

"The White People" (1900): Written as the diary of a young girl initiated into dark, ancient magic by her nurse. It is widely considered a masterpiece of suggestion and atmospheric dread.

The Hill of Dreams (1907): A semi-autobiographical novel following Lucian Taylor, a struggling artist whose intense interior life and obsessions with Roman Britain gradually collapse into madness. It is a quintessential work of 1890s British Decadence.

The Three Impostors (1895): An episodic novel modelled on Stevenson’s New Arabian Nights, weaving together linked urban gothic tales of occult cults and secret societies lurking behind London's ordinary facades.

"The Bowmen" (1914): A short wartime story published during WWI about phantom Agincourt archers protecting British soldiers, which inadvertently spawned the famous "Angels of Mons" urban legend.


Key Themes & Ideas

The Veil and the Numinous: Machen believed the material world was merely a thin, fragile curtain hiding a vast, terrifying, and awe-inspiring spiritual realm. Uncovering it led either to divine ecstasy or psychic destruction.

The "Little People" as Malicious Entities: Rejecting Victorian fairy-tale clichés, Machen reimagined Celtic folklore, depicting fairies as a degenerate, pre-human, subterranean race lurking in the Welsh hills—primitive, cruel, and profoundly alien.

Scientific Transgression: Writing in the wake of Darwinism and Victorian materialism, Machen warned against the hubris of modern science attempting to dissect spiritual phenomena, which inevitably resulted in moral regression and horror.

Sacramentalism & Ecstasy: A devout Anglo-Catholic and former member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Machen viewed art as a sacramental effort to capture "ecstasy"—the sense of stepping outside oneself to glimpse eternal truths.


Significance & Legacy

Machen is one of the foundational architects of modern weird fiction and folk horror.

Influence on Cosmic Horror: H. P. Lovecraft counted Machen among his greatest influences and named him one of the four "modern masters" of supernatural horror (alongside M.R. James, Algernon Blackwood, and Lord Dunsany). Lovecraft adapted Machen’s themes of ancient survivalists, forbidden books, and non-human ancestry directly into the Cthulhu Mythos.

Impact on Contemporary Authors: His work directly shaped modern dark fantasy writers, including Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, Peter Straub, and Clive Barker.

Cultural Mythmaker: His story "The Bowmen" demonstrated the sheer power of modern myth-making when a nation accepted his fictional tale of wartime angels as genuine history.

I've just finished I Hear A New World (2026). Abso-blimmin-fantastic. The blend of psychogeography, post-war history, and occult myth is catnip to me.

Spoiler free, five star review of.....


I Hear A New World (2026)

by

Alan Moore


https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...


I don't think I could have loved it more than I did

Inspired by AM's Long London series I an now reading....



Austin Osman Spare: The Life and Legend of London’s Lost Artist (2010)

by

Phil Baker


So far (a few chapters in) it's an absolute joy. A fascinating portrait of a very gifted and unusual person


London has harboured many curious characters, but few more curious than the artist and visionary Austin Osman Spare (1886-1956). A controversial enfant terrible of the Edwardian art world, the young Spare was hailed as a genius and a new Aubrey Beardsley, while George Bernard Shaw reportedly said “Spare’s medicine is too strong for the average man.”

But Spare was never made for worldly success and he went underground, falling out of the gallery system to live in poverty and obscurity south of the river.

Absorbed in occultism and sorcery, voyaging into inner dimensions and surrounding himself with cats and familiar spirits, he continued to produce extraordinary art while developing a magical philosophy of pleasure, obsession, and the subjective nature of reality.

Today Spare is both forgotten and famous, a cult figure whose modest life has been much mythologised since his death. This groundbreaking biographical study offers wide-ranging insights into Spare’s art, mind and world, reconnecting him with the art history that ignored him and exploring his parallel London; a bygone place of pub pianists, wealthy alchemists and monstrous owls.

“…an elegant and comprehensive biography… [Baker's] deep sympathy for his subject is nicely balanced by his scepticism towards some of Spare’s sources of esoteric thought. There is a wealth of detail here … A stunning tribute to an unjustly neglected artist.” – Noel Rooney, Fortean Times

‘I cannot recommend Austin Osman Spare too highly. Phil Baker has done a wonderful job of bringing the complexities and contradictions of Spare’s life to the fore, and in making the London of Spare’s time come to life vividly and richly. Hopefully this book will encourage a reassessment of Spare which is long overdue’ – Phil Hine

Love how one book leads you to another.

Yes, me too. I had never heard of this artist but this biography is terrific and I'm loving it

I've finished...



Austin Osman Spare: The Life and Legend of London’s Lost Artist (2010)

by

Phil Baker



https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

4/5