Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Alan Moore, long london, The Great When, waterstones

Alan Moore Talks Of His Inspiration For Long London & The Great When

Alan Moore talks about his inspiration when writing the first of the Long London novels, The Great When, now in paperback

Alan Moore's first of his five Long London novels, The Great When, is coming out in paperback in the UK next month (though the US will have to wait till March). I really love this novel, set in a post-war London, between the bookstores in Soho and Shoreditch, and a whole new world under the surface, like the original Plato forms, and our world just a reflection on the cave wall. But with some excellent characters, such as the gormless Dennis Knuckleyard, the hideously oppressive nature of Coffin Ada, and the wise-beyond-her-years Grace Shilling, as well as real-life artists, writers, gangsters and magicians running around the town, from the late Arthur Machen to Austin Osman Spare to Jack Comer to Ras Prince Monolulu. Named after William Cobbett's disparaging term for London, "the great wen", or a pus-filled boil, Alan Moore did a wonderful job lancing it. And there are more to come… but for now, he is sitting in Waterstones bookshop, talking about some of the books that inspired Long London.

"Hello, I'm Alan Moore and I'm here to tell you about my new book just out in paperback very shortly, which is The Great When. This is the first of five books in the Long London series, which is an excavation of some of the more marginal and little known points of London's history that is all stirred up into a very very baroque fantasy. And there's been a lot of books that have actually very much played into the writing of the Great When.

"One of them is Pariah Genius by my very good friend Ian Sinclair, for my money one of the best writers in the English language. and Emperor Genius. He's following the story of John Deakin, who was the photographer that Francis Bacon actually got all of those images from. Not a very likable man, but a very very interesting man. And Ian has done this wonderful story about John Deakin. He's already dead when the book opens. and the rest of the book is the thought going through the mind of this extraordinary dying man."

"Other books that have played into The Great When would include Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman, probably one of my favorite novels ever. The main thing about Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman is it's very, very strange and quite frightening in places but it's very, very funny. And that was something that I was trying to keep in mind while writing my book, that there's no reason why everything has to be straightfaced. There's no problem with having a laugh once in a while."

"The third book that certainly was a huge inspiration was Brian Catling's The Vorrh. This is the first book of a trilogy. But uh having read this, I realized that Brian had really raised the bar for fantasy writing. Because fantasy, as I see it, really shouldn't be about things that you already know about. I mean, I've got a lot of room for magicians and dragons and all the rest of the fantasy paraphernalia, but I would prefer a fantasy that gives you things that you've never even imagined before. And certainly in the Vorrh trilogy, Brian does that in spades. So while I was writing my books, I was thinking of all of these authors and trying to make sure that my book was at least in the same ballpark as these greats."

Doesn't mention Neverwhere, though. I suppose no one does these days.

The Great When: A Long London Novel Paperback – 14 Oct. 2025 by Alan Moore
From the New York Times bestselling author and legendary storyteller Alan Moore, the first book in an enthralling new series about murder, magic, and madness set between two Londons-one recovering from World War II, and one a secret world unlike any other.
"Extraordinary . . . very funny . . . It does what fantasy does best which is show us something beyond our experience." -Susanna Clarke, New York Times bestselling author of Piranesi and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
In 1949, amidst the smog of London, Dennis Knuckleyard, a hapless eighteen year-old employed by a second-hand bookshop, discovers a novel that simply does not exist. It is a fictitious book, one only existing within another novel. Yet it is physically there in his hands. How?
Dennis has stumbled on a book from the Great When, a magical version of London beyond time and space, where reality blurs with fiction and concepts such as Crime and Poetry are incarnated as wondrous, terrible beings. But this other, magical London must remain a secret: if Dennis cannot find a way to return this book to where it belongs, he risks facing gruesome and grave repercussions.
So begins a journey delving deep into the city's occult underbelly and tarrying with an eccentric cast of sorcerers, gangsters, and murderers – some from legend, some frighteningly real, and all with plans of their own. Soon Dennis finds himself at the center of an explosive series of events that may alter and endanger both Londons forever . . .

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