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The Great When

A Long London Novel

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The Great When

By: Alan Moore
Narrated by: Kobna Holdbrook-Smith
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Bloomsbury presents The Great When by Alan Moore, read by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith.

Nominated for Best Performance: Narrator at The Speakies (The British Audio Awards).

This audiobook features an exclusive essay, The True History of What Didn’t Happen, written and read by Alan Moore.

‘I was in the wrong London. It was horrible. I’d fallen in by accident, and it was all alive and trying to eat me.’

The year 1949, the city London.

Hapless second-hand bookseller Dennis stumbles through a city still shaking off the war. While out procuring inventory, Dennis’s life changes forever when he chances upon a novel that shouldn’t exist; an entirely fictional book from inside another novel.

The book hails from The Great When, a magical shadow-London, where reality blurs with fiction and concepts like Crime, Poetry and Riot are incarnated as mystical beings that stalk the streets. This discovery brings terrible danger, as the book’s presence leaves the doorway open between the two Londons, and The Great When must remain a secret.

Soon Dennis finds himself in the city’s occult underbelly, negotiating sorcerers, gangsters, and murderers – some imaginary, some all too real, and all with plans of their own. If Dennis cannot return the book and close the gate, he risks dire repercussions...

Neither London will ever be the same again.

History collides with magic in The Great When. Dark, ridiculous, propulsive, Sunday Times bestseller Alan Moore opens the gates to capital metafictional chaos in the genre-busting first instalment of the Long London series.

'It does what fantasy does best which is show us something beyond our experience… this shows us something absolutely new' Susanna Clarke

'A breathless time-travelling classic. Savage, humane, comic, terrifying' Iain Sinclair

'Brilliant and so powerfully imaginative’ Adam Curtis

'A weird book and a complete joy' Mariana Enríquez

‘A masterful step from one of our very best, uncompromising storytellers; Moore peels back the layers of London and reveals not only the history we know, but the histories that could have been, and, underneath it all, both the dark and beautiful truths about who we are as a nation.’ Heather Parry©2024 Alan Moore (P)2024 Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Crime Dark Fantasy Fantasy Historical Murder England Magic Mind-bending Fiction
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Continue the series
I Hear a New World cover art
I Hear a New World By: Alan Moore

Critic reviews

Think Terry Pratchett writing one of Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London novels – but still unmistakeably Alan. This has ‘massive hit’ written all over it (John Higgs)
Alan Moore is a visionary artist and a myth maker, and in The Great When he delivers the mystical core of the occult tradition of London: a fantasy novel that features Arthur Machen, Austin Osman Spare, an alternative world that is more real than ours, bookstores, crime and a city traumatized by the war. And he does this with fun, with challenging and beautiful writing, with delight and with the knowledge that there are portals and only a few can access them. This is a weird book and it's a complete joy (Mariana Enríquez, author of OUR SHARE OF NIGHT)
Extraordinary . . . very funny . . . It does what fantasy does best which is show us something beyond our experience (Susanna Clarke, New York Times bestselling author of Piranesi and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell)
Like Dickens, Alan Moore has us waiting on the dock, impatient for the next installment of his breathless, time-travelling classic. A preternaturally convincing hallucination from London's fetid past transports us, in some mysterious way, over the abyss of our impoverished post-digital present. Savage, humane, comic, terrifying: and that's just the first page. Now read on (Iain Sinclair)
A profound, gorgeous novel of secret magics and lost souls (Sunyi Dean, Sunday Times Bestselling author of THE BOOK EATERS)
[Moore’s] lyrical style is a play of poetry and metaphor with a dash of dry humour ... This is a lavishly crafted urban fantasy tale with a caustic and colourful cast, perfect for fans of Susanna Clarke
What Alan Moore has done is written a powerful, imaginative and beautiful battering ram that blasts through the narrow, static vision of the world we have today. At a time when we are told there is nothing else, that this is it - now and forever - The Great When opens the door to the thrilling idea that there could be all kinds of other worlds and other possibilities. That there could be something else beyond. And he does it funny and beautifully (Adam Curtis)
A masterful step from one of our very best, uncompromising storytellers; Moore peels back the layers of London and reveals not only the history we know, but the histories that could have been, and, underneath it all, both the dark and beautiful truths about who we are as a nation (Heather Parry)
The worldbuilding is extraordinary and the plot is utterly gripping. Readers are sure to be sucked in
A masterful storyteller… [Moore] turns his impressive imagination towards London.. [his] exuberant prose demands we see the magic and beauty that are intertwined with the mundane life of the city
It’s a romp, full of loving attention to the past
All stars
Most relevant
I loved the insanely densely packed descriptions, more vivid than a 15 year old’s hair (I am still scarred by that revelation). Thought Kobna, whose work I much admired on Rivers and Morden, was the perfect foil. Only disappointments were the slightly abrupt and downbeat ending, and the fact that I will now have to wait what will feel like ages for the next instalment.

Tour de force

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Good tight plotting which from Moore's novels isn't always a given. The characters feel alive.

Beautiful language as usual from Moore.

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At first this was a hard uphill slog to get in to. I didn't think I'd make it and was going to disappointedly DNF it but then I realised I kept mulling it over in between listening and found I was invested in the characters. I kept coming back to it and I'm really glad I did. The latter part of the book was most definitely easier to follow and it seemed the narrator finally found his rhythm (although for some inexplicable reason the mention of the shop door sign being 'open' or 'closed' got stuck in his throat...I couldn't go back to check I'd not had a glitch in my hearing after the 3rd time of hearing it so would be interested if anyone else experienced that). If you liked Gormenghast, Neverwhere and The Rivers of London and like alternate realities, then this is definitely the book for you.

Words. Lots of them.

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Love, love this story, though it seemed a lot shorter than I expected. Still it was a very enjoyable and the idea of an alternative london was intriguing and well realised.

His imaginative and creative use of language, I really paid attention. To some of the imagery that was conjured up.

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I loved the ‘other place’. Really good concept. I felt so much more might’ve happened.

The imaginative fantasy world

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