cotbs

[M Holmes]

Andrew Gilham writes:

> >it was more like granbreton, tho that still may not be right. but-
> >gran=great, breton=britain. guess that was mm's lil joke.
>
> Most of the locations in the Hawkmoon stories are real, e.g. Kamarg = the
> Camargue in the south of France, Kanbery = Canterbury.  I've seen a map,
> can't remember where, maybe in one of the new Millennium omnibuses?, which
> makes it all totally explicit even if European geography is unfamiliar, but
> anyway, it was deliberate making the British the villains, just to give it
> a twist for his (at the time) mostly British readership.  ('Course, that
> was before every Hollywood film made the British the bad guys :)
>
> There are some typical MM jokes too, the one I recall is "Aral Vilsn", some
> sort of legendary hero, which is of course Harold Wilson, then prime
> minister.

And of course the bridge to GranBrettan.

> I'd be more inclined to guess he was making it up as he went along, and
> only tried to impose that sort of structure later on?

Yup. He concedes that he was knocking the stories out one every three
days in order to try and save the New Worlds magazine which was then
going down the swannee.

> - Andy

FoFP