After a frantic but enjoyable two weeks in the UK, here are some picture highlights. The launch party was an incredible experience, thank you to everyone who came, fuhgeddaboudit to everyone who didn’t (you had excellent excuses), and apologies to the people I didn’t get a proper chance to chat to (which felt like almost everyone).
Click images for larger version. (I probably didn’t need to tell you that.)
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- Mr and Mrs Black Chalk at JFK airport, UK-bound
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- First stop Herne Hill. It has a lovely market that sells everything in Cockney rhyming slang
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- Tip: get yourself a scientist friend; they can build impromptu firepits; plus they enjoy it
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- The food from the flames
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- One of my favourite pubs in the world, The Churchill Arms in Notting Hill. I used its name for the pub in Black Chalk
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- Outside my publishers
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- Signing 350 books for the wonderful Goldsboro Books
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- My pile of signed books next to Lee Child’s pile
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- My Book of the Month shelf in Goldsboro Books
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- Regent’s Park where we used to walk on Sundays; nostalgia setting in
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- Moments before the Black Chalk launch party
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- The gracious and wonderful Lutyens & Rubinstein bookshop in Notting Hill hosted the party
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- Lutyens & Rubinstein window display; it’s a terrific shop, perfect to visit while shopping Portobello Market
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- It’s all about to kick off inside
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- My inspirational English teacher, Andrew Akehurst; I was considerably chuffed to see him arrive
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- My incredible editor Alison Hennessey
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- The crowd awaits a stunning speech from me; it may not surprise you to hear that they’re all still there
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- Such was the frivolity of the occasion we even allowed Australians to attend (centre)
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- If you stole my camera to take a selfie, thinking “he’ll never use this” then you were quite wrong
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- It’s a long story; the punchline is ‘space monkeys’; that’s all you need to know
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- Peter and Annemarie came all the way from Germany
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- Johan and Isabelle came all the way from Sweden
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- Simon came all the way from Shepherd’s Bush
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- That morning after feeling…
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- …but fortunately Rules serve Guinness in silver tankards
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- Magically restored; and Rules seemed a perfect place to celebrate the morning after the launch of a book about a game
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- “My name is Gandalf and I have come to save Middle Earth!”
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- Guinness for lunch, oysters for dessert (at Borough market)
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- “What do you mean I only get one magnum to myself?” (More celebrating at St. John Bread & Wine)
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- One Game. Six Students. Five Survivors! (Yet more celebrating with old college friends, Bibendum this time)
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- And for the final leg of the trip, down to my home county of Kent to show my American wife what the garden of England’s all about
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- Whitstable with my Mum
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- Obligatory Whitstable art shot
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- Rounding off the whirlwind UK tour with more oysters in Whitstable…
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- …and fish and chips
