It's Alan Moore Vs. Northamptonshire Council In Library Showdown, With BBC TV Show At Stake

Published Sun, 22 Oct 2017 14:00:08 -0500

Legendary writer and wizard Alan Moore has threatened to pull a TV project out of Northampton if the county council doesn't back down from plans to close 28 libraries in the county in order to save £290,000. The plan is part of a larger cost-cutting proposal aimed at saving £9.6 million, according to a report from local newspaper which couldn't decide on just one name, the Northampton Chronicle & Echo.

But Moore is a champion of the county's libraries, even though he says he no longer visits them. "The reason why I don't visit the library as much these days is because – shamefully – I've probably got more interesting books in my house right here." However, Moore, who credits weekly trips to the library to take out 4 books at a time starting at the age of 5 with inspiring him to become the man he is today, says that others don't have the opportunity to own a private library like Moore's. "So that is why libraries are intensely vital," Moore points out.

While one might think that Moore could find a powerful spell in one of those rare ancient tomes in his personal collection with which to blast the county council to smithereens, it seems that Moore is trying a more earthly approach to force the council to back down from its plans: economic sanctions.

"I'm on the verge after four or five years of quite intensive negotiations of actually getting a feature film made that follows on from the five short films that I made a couple of years ago with my friend, the director Mitch Jenkins," said Moore of a project which he says will bring fame and fortune to the town. However, while it's too late to stop the film, Moore says that a 2 or 3 season TV show which he believes the BBC is interested in will not go forward, or at least won't go forward in Northampton, if the council doesn't stop the "continuing destruction and pillaging of the town's resources." Moore was forced to resort to the threat after publicly rebuking the council and staring sternly at it with his deeply soulful eyes failed to make the kind of progress he was looking for.

It's Alan Moore Vs. Northamptonshire Council In Library Showdown, With BBC TV Show At Stake — By Gaius Cornelius (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 or GFDL], via Wikimedia Commons

"I cannot go on passively accepting all of this needless despoliation that is being perpetrated in the place where I grew up," said Moore, who has previously likened the results of the council's plundering as turning the county into "a post-apocalyptic disaster movie, when the Upper Mounts looks like Sarajevo in the 1990s ."

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