Susanna Clarke and Neil Gaiman in conversation (Bloomsbury Theatre) 25/09/07

There is always so much happening in London, that I often find myself discovering that I've just missed a concert by a favourite band or the like. Well on the way back from Edinburgh, I was reading a free newspaper where I spotted an ad for this event.


In case you don't know, Susanna Clarke is the author of the superlatively wonderful Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. The novel is set in an alternative 19th C Britain, during a revival of English magic during the Napoleonic Wars. It is a work of what is now popularly called 'magical realism', and it has an incredible level of detail married to a period-style vocabulary.

Neil Gaiman is a very famous comic book writer, best known for his Sandman series. He is also a novelist and all-round prolific author.

Anyway, the interplay between the two was lovely. It was effectively a promo junket for Susanna's new book, The Ladies of Grace Adieu, from which she did some reading. A really great event, the magic of which not even the false fire alarm and attendant hour long wait in the London cold could dispel.