Napoleon defeated, God dead, confidence up: How one London church reveals our secret history
This is a short story about what really happens to the things we think are permanent and powerful. And how they may not be at all what they seem. In 1818, the British Government announced a bonanza of one million pounds to be spent on celebrating victory over Napoleon. Buildings, events, whatever. But…
Zombies, punks & immigrants: What J.G. Ballard’s ‘High Rise’ says about Britain in 2015
It’s there if you look for it, snaking like mist around the tower blocks of West London, from Acton to Ladbroke Grove. An atmosphere. A message for us, maybe. This part of London was the inspiration and setting for JG Ballard as he wrote his 1975 dystopian novel High Rise. In…
1,217 words for absence
Lena is a close friend. She’s been my friend for more than 20 years now, so I’m lucky. She’s a beautiful, playful, kind, lovably geeky girl/woman – from Uganda by way of North London’s Jubilee line Big Yellow Storage hinterlands, then Gloucestershire, Cambridge and the Big Smoke. We were flatmates for years – the…
News: Catch Matt performing in the Literary Death Match at London’s Stoke Newington Literary Festival, June 2nd!
I’ll be facing off against some of Britain’s best writers and comedians in the 26th Literary Death Match at London’s hipsterest literary festival this June. If you’ve not yet had the pleasure of sampling Outlaws Inc., or enjoyed it but suspect what it might be missing is a live, onstage setting in which its…
Comment: In praise of apathy: salesmen and survivors, and what two very different bomb sites can tell us about pre-Olympic London in 2012
Something I saw today got me thinking about just what it means to live in a city, and what I hate and love about it. I suspect that it’s got something to tell me about why I distrust the London 2012 cheerleading so much, but I’ll only know when this post is finished. Before I…
Comment: Duwayne Brooks and the London riot story that never got written
Some stories write themselves. Some never get written, though they’re better by far. There’s something irreducible about them, too many loose ends. They don’t have neat beginnings and endings. They don’t fit our (journalists’, readers’) idea of the arc. Sometimes they’re just collected impressions. This one’s like that, and I’m setting it down here simply…
Outlaws Inc. UK launch event!
The first virgin cases of Matt’s non-fiction thriller/true crime book Outlaws Inc. will be broken open at a launch reception at London’s Goldsboro Books. For a place on the guest list, more information, or interview opportunities and press material, email matt [at] mattpotterbooks [dot] com or h.guthrie [at] macmillan [dot] co [dot] uk.