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Unearthing Details of Alan Moore's Long London: The Great When

Alan Moore' five-novel series, Long London, starting with The Great When, is published by Bloomsbury in October.

Alan Moore is writing London. He has long written Northampton, in Voice Of The Fire, Jerusalem, Big Numbers, Show Pieces, The Show, Dodgem Logic and more and, in doing so, has illustrated everywhere a huge history that can be unearthed through archaeology, through literature. It's not just places like London that have such rich histories just because London has a multiplicity of museums, galleries, libraries and blue plaques. Even in somewhere like Northampton, you can go back through thousands of years and find the most important historical moments, the most significant lived lives… and that is true everywhere. But you know what? London also has that history, it's closer to the surface and there actually is more of it. I cycle through much of it every week, something that has opened my eyes to a lot more, and sent me scurrying through Wikipedia pages when I get home every time. So now it's time for Alan Moore to take on London in a five-novel series, Long London, starting with The Great When in October, published alongside his final comic book, The Moon And Serpent Bumper Book Of Magic.

All in time for his 71st birthday in November.

Katie Fraser of The Bookseller has interviewed Alan Moore, but has also given the first take on the book and its lead character, Dennis Knuckleyard. Previously Bleeding Cool had reported the following text;

"Dennis Knuckleyard is a hapless eighteen-year-old who works and lives in a second-hand bookstore in 1949 London. Aspiring writer though he is, his life feels quite uneventful. But one day his boss and landlord, Coffin Ada, sends him to retrieve some rare books from a strange and paranoid dealer, and he discovers that one of them, A London Walk by Rev. Thomas Hampole, does not exist; Hamphole and A London Walk are both fictions made by another author, so how did they come to be physically in his hands? Coffin Ada informs him they come from the other London, the Great When, a version of the city that is beyond time, in which every aspect of its history from its origin to its demise is somehow made manifest. There epochs blend and realities and unrealities blur and concets such as Crime and Poetry are incarnated as wondrous and terrible beings. Further, Coffin Ada tells Dennis, if he does not return the book to this other London, he will be killed, literally turned inside out."

"So begins Dennis' adventure in Long London. To return the otherworldly book, he must dive deep into the city's occult underbelly, meeting an eccentric cast of sorcerers and gangsters, including Grace Shilling, a sex worker who agrees to help Dennis with the caveat that she will stab him if he makes any advances, Prince Monolulu, an infamous horse race tipster who claims to be an Abyssinian Prince, and Jack Spot, a ruthless mob boss looking to cement his status on top of the city's underworld. But upon entering The Great When, Dennis finds himself at the center of an explosive series of events, one that may have altered and endangered both Londons for good."

Now the Bookseller provides more:

"Dennis is enduring his rather dreary life until he accidentally comes into possession of a book—a book that should not exist in this world. Thrown out by Coffin Ada, poor Dennis is left to return the tome, but circumstances conspire against him. With the former owner of the book now dead, Dennis finds himself the target of a criminal gang who want the mysterious text. Homeless and on the run, Dennis inadvertently stumbles into the "other London". Also known as the "Great When" or "Long London", this nightmarish, imaginary realm is the supernatural counterpart to the city Dennis calls home. It is a place where you can converse with the preserved decapitated head of Thomas Cromwell and  one wrong step can result in death. Dennis must not only learn how to navigate this new realm, and the criminals, artists and occult figures with which he is now entwined, but also completely reconfigure his understanding of reality.

"This is no Narnia-esque tale where entry into the magical realm is preceded by the tickle of fur coats and the smell of pine. Dennis' introduction to the Great When is visceral and violent. Upon arrival, he is immediately confronted with "anaconda drainpipes that detach from walls" and "chewing-gum molluscs inching to investigate his credibility".

"Moore explains: "I thought if we were to enter Narnia, or any of these other places, it would surely be a much bigger deal. It would be so jarring. It would probably undo us mentally and traumatise us for the rest of our lives." After his first foray into the other city, Dennis immediately bursts into tears and later expeditions are marked with varying bodily functions. "This is something that would jar with every idea of reality that you've ever formulated. Your entire sense of what is real and what isn't would have been shattered."

"We conjure an imaginary London that is at least half fiction," says Moore. "We associate the characters of Dickens, say, with our picture of 19th-century London. It is, for us, a conglomerate of its past, present, future, fiction and mythology. I wanted to somehow condense all those things into a bouillon, a kind of boiled down essence or soup, of the entirety of the city."

As a fan of Iain Sinclair's writings on London, as well as Michael Moorcock, Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers Of London, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke, The Checquy Files by Daniel O'Malley and more, it seems that London is to urban fantasy what New York is to superheroes. And now it's time for Alan Moore to have a go…

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