'LONDON. The West End...'
Here are two pics my brother and I took of a couple of Black Tat's key locations in London's West End. We think they've come out rather nicely. ;)
At the base of the skyscraper known as Centre Point Tower, in the darkness at the end of a dank concrete walkway, something stirred.
The Palace Theatre is one of the most impressive buildings in the West End a grand and ostentatious mass of stripy pink brick festooned with turrets, glittering windows, and fat stone cherubs.
UPDATE (22nd June 2007) And now, thanks to my friend Sophie (who got me up there), here are some pics I took of what the view from the top of Centre Point Tower looks like! We couldn't actually sit on the roof like Charlie and Jack do in Black Tat, but as you can see, we were pretty close...
Here's a pic of Charing Cross Road from above. As you might know, Charlie, Esme and Jack fly down it skimming that line of trees while chasing the Scourge in the Black Tat chapter called Jessica, in Book 1. If you look very closely (opposite that weird brown Aztec ziggurat looking thing!) you can make out the Palace Theatre, and maybe even the roof where Raymond keeps the pigeons. ;)
This is the view westward from Centre Point. You can see the BT Tower, which is going to make a spectacular (dis-!)appearance in my next book TIM, DEFENDER OF THE EARTH. Hee hee hee!
Here's another panorama, looking east this time. A wonky angle from your hamfisted author/photographer, or a deliberate effect to simulate turning in mid-air? You decide! ;p The large green lozenge is the British Museum's Great Court, also mentioned in Tim.
...And lastly, here's one of the Thames in the distance. The Black Tat passage I was thinking of when I took the pic comes in Book 3, in the chapter called Friends:
Jack had to admit, there was a pretty good view from the roof. London's streets were spread out all around him like the glittering threads of a spiderweb, the Thames cutting through them like a slash of darkness.
OK: it was early evening when we went up the tower, not the middle of the night when the passage occurs. But I was certainly imagining again what it might be like to fly through the air over the streets of London. I hope these pics do the same for you!
