David Bowie, Enid Blyton and the Sun Machine

‘David Bowie, Enid Blyton and the sun machine is a new species of book: a dazzling act of literary-critical rebellion, a portrait of pandemic family life and an intimate exploration of personal history. This book illuminates the recent cultural past, casting new light on the lives of David Bowie and Enid Blyton, and infuses the future with the brightness of its invention and wit. Royle’s work has much in common with some of the most successful and daring writing of recent years, such as Patricia Lockwood's no one is talking about this and Max Porter's Grief is the Thing with Feathers, which entrance the reader with their inventiveness as well as their moving explorations of the wildest and most intimate experiences of love.’ Naomi Booth, author of Swoon: A Poetics of Passing Out ‘David Bowie, Enid Blyton and the sun machine is about how literature and music burrows tunnels through our lives, connecting worlds of imagination and memory, connecting us to each other, creating new spaces for light to enter. Royle’s heartfelt and mischievous text assembles narratives, images, sounds, lyrics, children’s books and real and imagined memories into a luminous construction. Fragile and abundant, indulgent and generous, it is about how the “peculiar goings-on” in a Famous Five book or a stray line from a David Bowie song can change the way you see the world.’ Leah Kardos, author of Blackstar Theory: The Last Works of David Bowie ‘This is a fascinating book. Harassed academics will immediately relate to it, and so will all Enid Blyton and David Bowie fans, but it is much more than a book about any of those topics. It is an evocation of a time and a place, South London in the mid-twentieth century, the world that produced two such disparate figures as Blyton and Bowie, but also the author himself. I read it with great pleasure and interest.’ Gabriel Josipovici, author of Forgetting 'Hugely pleasurable. An adventure in life-writing and a highly original celebration of the life-forces of art and song.’ Alison Light, author of A Radical Romance ‘The book’s appeal and strength is the very unusual melding of Royle’s own story, Enid Blyton, Beckenham, David Bowie (including ‘Memory of a Free Festival’), which all coalesce by pivoting time and geography.’ Stephen Finer, painter ‘David Bowie, Enid Blyton and the sun machine is written with a poet's playful ear and a sometimes fierce polemical rage. Nicholas Royle's book has moments that will make you gasp with wonder. Turns of thought, passion and story feel as if they come from a master film director or a virtuoso storyteller. Linking Blyton with Bowie in ways we never dreamt imaginable, Royle illumines the solar wonder of both figures – and reminds us of the glories that both inhabit and surround us all.’ Denis Flannery, editor of The Cambridge Companion to David Bowie -- .