BOOK REVIEW: “The Great When” by Alan Moore

Entertaining magical shenanigans in London's secret mystical twin

Alan Moore’s The Great When¹ is the first in a planned quintet of fantasy novels, this opening instalment of which is set in a post-war London still in shell-shocked recovery from the Blitz. It details the hapless adventures of the gloriously named Dennis Knuckleyard, a teenage apprentice bookseller who finds his world upended when he happens upon a book that shouldn’t be (a purportedly fictional tome whose only existence was thought to be a brief mention in a short story by Arthur Machen), and mere possession of which puts the green-gilled Dennis is considerable and unwitting danger from those who covet it. This mysterious book opens a door to another, hidden London – the “Great When” of the title – initiating Dennis into a surreal and occasionally lethal reality, where streets are paved with gold, drainpipes become boa constrictors, and the wrong word to a harmless-looking cat might get your insides turned out (and your outsides in).

It is this supernatural twist which introduces Moore’s main theme. As the author himself puts it in the book’s afterword, “Everything is made of story”, and The Great When is fundamentally a book about how the stories we tell ourselves in order to make sense of the world – historical, philosophical, religious, fictional – from the seediest scandal sheet to the most high-flown Work of Literature, have a reality all of their own. We make the world out of words; but that world also makes us. And so, unknown to most, there is a secret, hidden London, concealed behind and within its mundane twin.² It is this mysterious place that is the true home of the imagination, into which artists, poets, drug users and visionaries occasionally stumble, an eternal chronicle of all things that have – and will one day have – happened. It contains – like Plato’s ideal world of pure intellectual forms – the “essences” of things. At one point, an aspiring hoodlum meets Harry Lud, the quintessential gangster and wide boy. Lud is one of the “Arcana” of the Great When,³ one of a select number of semi- or even non-human entities that embody fundamental existential qualities, drives and experiences. He is, simply put, the archetype of crime, both consisting of and inspiring its various nefarious activities.

his perfume is Bay Rum and Brylcreem, tarts and dogs, cigars and marzipan … the heavy coat he wears is furred with rustling layers of banknotes, blackmail letters, compromising snapshots, ransom messages, appalled newspaper headlines, flash-blanched mugshots, warrants and forged documents

All this is not in itself new ground. For the setting, the book’s epigraph acknowledges fellow writers Iain Sinclair and Michael Moorcock, “both longer in London and there before me”. In terms of the precursors of the concept of the Great When, Moore might also have acknowledged the Dreaming of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comics, similarly populated with literary, psychological and historical archetypes. Another (I suspect) key influence here may have been Peter Ackroyd, whose novels (Hawksmoor, Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem, The House of Doctor Dee, and others) also treat London as a sort of palimpsest of the ages, overwriting the literary and the historical, the spiritual and the criminal, in an attempt to suggest the timeless restless spirit haunting each mundane brick and stone, each street corner, bridge and monument. And of course, Moore might also have given a nod to his own back catalogue, which (most notably Promethea, but also From Hell and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) frequently touches on similar themes and concepts.

Perhaps unsurprisingly (given its setting), there is also a strong Dickensian quality to the narrative, not just in terms of Moore’s lovingly detailed pen portraits of various parts of London, but the larger-than-life characters that inhabit it. There is Coffin Ada, Dennis’s delightfully foul-mouthed and misanthropic employer, never a kind word for anyone, least of all Dennis himself. There’s Grace Shilling, the russet-haired, street-savvy prostitute, brain wiser than her years, who takes pity on Dennis and gets drawn into his escapades. There’s Gog Blincoe, an enormous “tree” of a man, who, with others, is often on hand to guide Dennis past the pitfalls and dangers of the strange new reality that he has stumbled into, but who is himself a mystery. In addition to these colourful and finely drawn fictional personas, there is also a long list of real-life cameos. In places, the book reads like an occult who’s who – Aleister Crowley, Dion Fortune, Kenneth Grant, Austin Osman Spare (the latter playing a significant role in the plot). There are nods, passing mentions and more substantial discussions of a slew of literary celebrities – Arthur Machen, William Blake, Thomas de Quincey, George Orwell. And the whole story is seeped in references to those figures, big and small, celebrated and notorious – Oliver Cromwell, Anne Boleyn, Tom Driberg, Harry Roberts – who have shaped London’s politics, history and culture. All of which is usually interesting and informative, though some bits do feel more like an indulgent footnote than something instrumental to the story.

As for its style, Moore’s literary virtuosity is at full throttle. The text is rich in clever puns, amusing similes, splendid metaphors, novel adjectives and – well, let’s just say that the war on cliché is unrelenting, and there is rarely a dull syllable. This can make for heavy going at times, if I’m honest, and the text occasionally succumbs to a case of “synonymitis”. In Moore’s hands, a spade may be an excavator, a manual earth mover, or a subterranean exhumator, but rarely ever just “a spade” – and the same goes for “a Spare”. In the space of a few paragraphs, the artist and occultist – who has lately been rendered homeless and is staying in someone’s cellar – is described subsequently as a “destitute enchanter”, a “basement hierophant” and an “itinerant magician”. When we enter the “other world”, the floridity goes into overdrive, and we are treated to a number of passages which bypass purple and head straight for ultra violet.

However, this is a minor gripe. The overall effect of Moore’s verbosity is to brighten and enliven even those passages that serve a workmanlike purpose, and which, in the hands of a less gifted writer, would be humdrum and pedestrian. Moore is a such wonderfully generous writer, and it’s obvious that his main intent is to entertain, to pack each line with something of verbal or intellectual interest, and there are many memorable images and turns of phrase. For instance, in an early passage, surrealist poet David Gascoyne is subjected to a disturbing supernatural vision. Resuming his mundane life, he is however fundamentally altered, and “on sanity’s floorboards is thereafter apprehensive, having felt their sag and heard their threatening splinter.” And the text abounds in such fine writing.

Moore’s political sympathies are also nailed to the mast. In a wonderful passage toward the end, Dennis’s journalistic friend, “Tolerable John”, provides an overall optimistic report on the health of post-war Britain – before adding a cynical coda that can only be a swipe at our current situation:

‘The new Brittannia’s looking good, but where I think we’re going to have a problem is in letting old Britannia go. It’s clear the empire’s had its chips, with India ready to abandon ship, but what’s the betting that we’ll try to hang on to our status as a grand world power, up there with Russia and the Yanks, despite the fact we’re in debt to our eyeballs? We keep up the illusion that we’re still a great one, but I can’t see that we’ll have the money to do both. And knowing us, we’ll probably decide that destitution’s not too bad, so long as you can dress it in a Union Jack waistcoat.’

Given all of the above, there is a lot of common ground with Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow – WWII, London, weird conspiracies, anarchic humour, verbal invention, anti-imperialism – though Moore’s book is far less daunting a read. And in addition to the cultural allusions, historical cameos, occult philosophising, and verbal gymnastics, there is an entertaining story here. Dazzling as it is at times, the emphasis is on the reader’s enjoyment – where it succeeds admirably. Bring on book 2!

A final word about the cover and design of the book. My hardback edition comes with a dust jacket exquisitely illustrated by Nico Delort with his wonderful scratchboard technique, which also continues on to the “sprayed” page edges. It really is a thing of meticulous beauty – like the story itself.

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The Speculative Book Club reviews all things science-fictional, fantastical, philosophical and speculative, as well as graphic novels, books about writing, creativity, technology, and whatever else takes my fancy.

1. In French, I note, the title translates beautifully as Le Grand Quand!

2. Moore uses the obscure word perichoresis to describe the relationship of the two Londons, a term borrowed from theology, where it is used to account for the interpenetration of the members of the Christian Trinity.

3. Here Moore borrows a term from Tarot.