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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 03/10/2026

I have a real issue with the use of "you" in posts like this, honestly. I mean, on the one hand: no, I absolutely didn't. On the other hand: OK, so maybe I belong to a society that did, but don't we all? It's the flinging out a general accusation while exempting oneself that I find infuriating.

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 27/09/2026

Forgotten Lives 4 includes stories by Simon Bucher-Jones, Kara Dennison, Paul Driscoll, Jay Eales, Ian McIntire, Philip Purser-Hallard, Cody Schell, Dale Smith and Daniel Tessier. As before, it's edited by me, and all proceeds will go to Alzheimer’s Research UK.

The back cover of the book, with the eight images of the Doctor reproduced on a smaller scale along the bottom, and a larger image of the Harper Doctor in adjudicators' robes. The blurb, contained in a yellow TARDIS silhouette, reads:

‘Nothing is ever forgotten, not completely.

And if something can be remembered, it can come back.’

Once upon a time, he courted the Dread Lady of Iron Tooth. He followed ghostly footsteps through St Orus’ cloister and entered a world beneath the Earth. He lifted a Hollywood curse, escaped his own trial and climbed the Point of Creation itself. He sealed the fate of Ortmeir and learned the truth about the Speckled Serpent.

The Doctor remembers none of this now – but all of it happened. These stories bring back those moments from the Doctor’s forgotten lives.

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 27/09/2026

The Forgotten Lives saga charts the adventures of the so-called 'Morbius Doctors', glimpsed during the fourth Doctor's mind duel with the eponymous Brain of Morbius. Past authors have included Lance Parkin, Aditya Bidikar and Andrew Hickey.

Montage of the Doctor's eight previously unseen past faces from The Brain of Morbius, represented by photos of various members of the BBC production team -- respectively Christopher Barry, Robert Banks Stewart, Christopher Baker, Philip Hinchcliffe, Douglas Camfield, Graeme Harper, Robert Holmes and George Gallaccio.

The front cover of Forgotten Lives -- cover design by Cody Schell, cover art by Paul Hanley. Visible are the Camfield, Harper, Holmes and Gallaccio Doctors (Baker, Banks Stewart, Barry and Hinchcliffe are on the back cover).

The front cover of Forgotten Lives 2 -- cover design by Cody Schell, cover art of all eight Morbius Doctors by John J Pearson.

The front cover of Forgotten Lives 3 -- cover design by Cody Schell, cover art of all eight Morbius Doctors by Jon Huff.

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 27/09/2026

I'm not sure yet when we'll have a publication date, but I'm pleased to announce that our earlier conviction that Forgotten Lives 3 would be the final Forgotten Lives volume was... premature. (Cover design by Cody Schell, cover artwork by Raine Szramski)

The front cover of Forgotten Lives 4, with a collage of artwork of the Christopher Baker, Philip Hinchcliffe, Robert Banks Stewart, Christopher Barry, Robert Holmes, Graeme Harper, George Gallaccio and Douglas Camfield Doctors.

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 27/09/2026

Fandom is when you write an incredibly sincere, complex and detailed study of the changing appearances of alien species in Star Trek, but arbitrarily decide to leave out a series you happen not to like because fuck them. www.ex-astris-scientia.org/inconsistenc...

This article otherwise disregards Discovery, as the series used to reboot species for the sake of rebooting them.

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 26/09/2026

I've often heard cats snore, but Raven has an astonishing range of what I can only describe as contented grunts for when she's relaxed but not asleep. I've never heard anything like them from any other cat.

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 23/09/2026

Have they considered making some cash on the side by posing for stock photos? I bet they'd be really good at it.

Guardian article headlined "Unhapoy couples staying put due to cost of living crisis". It is illustrated with a photo of two people having a vastly exaggerated argument for the camera.

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 20/09/2026

Anyway. I'll probably never write it, and if I ever do it'll be a weird pseudo-historical pastiche. But it would be fun. (There'd even be a six-tentacled Centauri ambassador.)

The Centauri ambassador to Babylon 5, Londo Mollari, showing Lennier a statue with the characteristic sixfold tentacular Centauri genitals.

The Alpha Centauri ambassador to Peladon, Alpha Centauri. He also has six tentacles, whose resemblance to genitalia is probably accidental.

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 20/09/2026

If you're in a bookshop, I'd be very interested to know if this is on the shelves.

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 10/09/2026

The 90s called. They say they hate you and want you to suffer.

Guardian headline reads:
Theatre
Sacha Baron Cohen lined up for Quentin Tarantino's West End playwriting debut

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 08/09/2026

The family are watching the TNG episode with Tasha Yar's sister in it. Turkana IV's government and its infrastructure have fallen and anarchy reigns, but they still have access to excellent hairdressers. And clothing outlets. And dentists.

Beth Toussaint as Ishara Yar in Star Trek The Next Generation: Legacy (1990)

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 05/09/2026

Particular respect to the translator, Lenka Lichtenberg, for making the fake Shakespeare sonnet rhyme.

Text from the English edition of Masters of Lies.

SONNET ATTRIBUTED TO SHAKESPEARE
Love that is feigned is but the shade of Love,
And shades will often dissemble and deceive.
Their natures ill, such spectres' falsehood prove.
Yet also walk, unrestful, those we grieve,
At labour still to expiate their Sin.
And honest—if they were so—as before.
Some ghosts occasion Fortune for their kin,
And others from Misfortune keep them sure.
Thus Truth persists, though Falsehood may be rife.
The dead may walk, and at the end may rise,
And those once shades shall win unending Life.
‘Tis so with Love. Though it begin in lies,
What lies must rise and quicken, as we see,
And live in Truth and Perpetuity.

Page with the Czech translation of the sonnet. Again I won't transcribe it, but you can tell from the line endings that it preserves the same rhyme scheme.

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 05/09/2026

Blimey. I wasn't expecting this today: the Czech translation of my Holmes novel Masters of Lies. Beautiful edition too.

Front cover of Sherlock Holmes: A Mistři Lží by Philip Purser-Hallard. It's gold on red, with abstract imagery of a deerstalker, a magnifying glass, an hourglass, a quill pen, an inkpot and a burning letter.

Back cover of the same book, with blurb in Czech. I'm not going to transcribe it all.

Inner back cover flap, with an author photo and my biog in Czech.

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 05/09/2026

How had I failed to realise that the actor who plays Doc in Buffy season 5 is the MC from Cabaret? Sheer ignorance, I guess.

Joel Grey as the Master of Ceremonies in Cabaret (1972)

Joel Grey as Doc in Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Gift (2001)

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 02/09/2026

Hypercorrecting "whom". Just say "who", for heaven's sake.

Opinion
Farewell Keir Starmer, a terrible politician whom we desperately wanted to be something more
Zoe Williams

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 30/08/2026

It seems very odd that the Deep Space 9 writers invented the holocommunicator -- a thoroughly sensible extrapolation of Federation technology that instantly made the inevitable Captain-we're-being-hailed scenes far more dramatic -- used it in two episodes, then entirely ignored it afterwards.

Captains Sisko and Sanders having a chinwag over the USS Defiant's holocommunicator.

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 30/08/2026

Scrolled past this on my timeline and thought for a moment he was wearing a Time Lord collar and skullcap. Tim Curry as Rassilon. Wouldn't that have been something.

Tim Curry as Long John Silver in Muppet Treasure Island.

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 29/08/2026

No. No, go away. Piss off at once and do not come back. (It comes back.)

Pop-up box on the Amazon home page reading:
Hi, I'm Rufus!
You can ask me all you shopping questions. My answers are powered by AI, so I may not always get things right. (Learn more about Rufus)
What do you need help with today?

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 29/08/2026

I mean, I understand this point of view, I absolutely do. I just think berating people for rejoicing when someone vile gets their comeuppance is expecting higher things of human beings under intense stress (which these days is all of us) than is entirely realistic.

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 27/08/2026

Synchronicity on the Guardian website.

Illustration of Tim Curry as It, from a story headed "Film: Tim Curry's five best screen roles" next to a headline reading "Psychology: How to spot a psychopath".

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 23/08/2026

Apart from everything else awful about it, this is self-evident bollocks. The analogue of "Chinaman" would be "Englandman", not "Englishman". The only direct equivalent I can think of is "Indiaman", and, well.

An arsehole writes: "So, yes, I accept that ‘Chinaman’ can be used as a slur and that it has been. But there’s nothing necessarily or intrinsically slurry about it. It’s the verbal equivalent of ‘Frenchman’, ‘Dutchman’ and ‘Irishman’. Indeed, in the sentence to which my editor took exception, ‘Chinamen’ appears nine words after ‘Englishmen’."

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 17/08/2026

For days my Windows starting screen has been showing me an image of a Thai temple which, it assures me, "dates back more than three centuries". It's a perfectly nice temple, but I know people who live in houses older than that. This American awe at minor antiquity always reminds me of Clueless.

Image from Clueless (1995) of a tacky LA mansion. The narrator, Cher, is saying "The columns date all the way back to 1972."

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 17/08/2026

Well, this is bonkers. A scam email to my day-job work address, summarising the Italian translation of my fourth Sherlock Holmes novel for me and offering to publish it through Faber and Faber. Sorry, but Titan got the gig in 2023. ("faberandfaber@aol.com" is a particularly impressive touch.)

From: Louisa Joyner <louisa.faberandfaber@aol.com>
Sent: 16 August 2026 15:09
To: Philip Purser-Hallard [address redacted]
Subject: A note about Sherlock Holmes: Il mostro del lago

Hi Philip,

Please are you the author of Sherlock Holmes: Il mostro del lago?

I’m Louisa Joyner, a Senior Editorial Director at Faber & Faber. I recently came across your novel and wanted to reach out directly. I was especially drawn to the atmosphere you create around Wermeholt the isolated village, dark slate buildings, ancient cemetery and looming rock formation give the setting an immediately unsettling quality before the mystery has even properly begun.

I also liked the way Watson is drawn into the investigation almost against his better judgment. What begins as a quiet stay in the Lake District becomes considerably less restful when a secret research team appears, bringing together a folklorist, an anatomist and a paleontologist, followed by the discovery of a brutally mutilated body. That combination of scientific mystery, local folklore and the possibility of something far less explainable feels very fitting for a Sherlock Holmes story.

Before I go further, I wanted to check: are you currently represented by a literary agent, or is your manuscript's publishing status still open?

If it’s available, we’d love the opportunity to review the full manuscript and consider it for publication with us. I’m happy to share more about our list and what we could offer if that’s of interest.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Best,
Louisa Joyner

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 16/08/2026

Casting the female leads from two different Doctor Who spinoffs has to be deliberate, right? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cro...

A Paramount+ publicity image for The Crow Girl (2025-), featuring Eve "Gwen off Torchwood" Myles and Katherine "Miss Quill in Class" Kelly.

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 15/08/2026

Not a factual source, obviously, but Viz has heard of it.

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 10/08/2026

The Doctor who example I was thinking of came from 2007.

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 25/07/2026

Best adaptation of The Odyssey, wrong answers only.

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 24/07/2026

I find it difficult to believe anyone would call a tech startup "Hugging Face" after the thing on the left rather than the thing on the right. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 22/07/2026

Deeply unimpressed by the DWM installation of the Circuit Breaker story. Titan's Origins comic made storytelling capital of the Fugitive Doctor's edgy relationship with her Division employers, and of her earlier place in Gallifreyan history. This doesn't care about any of that.

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 19/07/2026

Have the Doctor Who extended media ever done a Tractators vs Menoptera story? Why not?

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 19/07/2026

Er, this is a surprise. Is it because I'm unimpressed by Andy Burnham, or because I was complimentary about Stephen Moffat?

Screenshot shows a user adding me to multiple moderation lists including "hates minorities", "rap edefenders", "terms" and "ableist".

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 18/07/2026

I can't think of any other story that's been so thoroughly rewritten -- and all without changing a single line. A spokeswoman for the Doctor's actual, verifiable future, turning up in her past through what could only be time travel. An amazing feat for a writer who deals in Doctor Who as myth.

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 18/07/2026

By beautifully recontextualising her over 13 subsequent episodes, Moffat achieves the appearance of an 11th Doctor regular here, a year early, with all her memories of that era intact. The writing's totally good enough that her death hurt the first time round, but it's so much more effective now.

River Song and Matt Smith's 11th Doctor in The Time of Angels / Flesh and Stone (2011).

River Song newly regenerated into Alex Kingston in Let's Kill Hitler (2012)

The Doctor and River get married, watched by Amy and Rory, the parents of the bride, in The Wedding of River Song

Peter Capaldi's Doctor and River in The Husbands of River Song

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 18/07/2026

Even in the two-parter, it's clear that River Song is not just the Doctor's future companion, but his soulmate (and that Moffat has been reading The Time-Traveller's Wife). At the time I didn't imagine we'd see her again -- the Doctor has had unrealised futures before -- but I was very wrong.

Michael Jayston as the Valeyard, somewhere between the Doctor's 12th and final incarnations, in The Ultimate Foe (1986).

Sylvester McCoy as the Doctor and Jean Marsh as Morgaine, who knows his future self as Merlin, in Battlefield (1989).

Tennant as the Doctor and Alex Kingston as River Song

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 18/07/2026

Freshly in awe every time I watch Silence in the Library / The Forest of the Dead. Not just one of the best and most intellectually exciting stories of Russell T Davies' era, it's become a time-travelling exclave of Steven Moffat's era, a manifesto foreshadowing his own approach to the series.

Catherine Tate as Donna and David Tennant as the Doctor in a huge library, in Silence in the Library / The Forest of the Dead (2008)

Eve Newton as CAL watching the Doctor on her TV.

A skeleton in a spacesuit. It's a bit complicated to explain.

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 10/07/2026

When I wrote the character of Kyme Janute in Of the City of the Saved, my one-line description was "Ann Widdecombe as played by Mr T."

Cover of the Mad Norwegian Press edition of Of the City of the Saved. Among a group of silhouettes, a glamorous woman is chatting to a man in skeleton armour with antlers and a cloak with a vast nighttime cityscape far below. It's all very purple.

Cover of the Obverse Books edition of Of the City of the Saved. An abstract collage of objects including the Venus of Willendorf, a tricorn hat, a spaceship, an 60s-TV-style computer bank, a Sherlock Holmes pipe, a revolver, a Roman centurion's helmet and some kind of unidentifiable microbe-like thing.

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 07/07/2026

“I will make a statement on my future in public life at 2pm.”

Martin Jarvis as the Governor in Doctor Who: Vengeance on Varos (1985), about to face a potentially fatal public referendum on his performance.

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Philip Purser-Hallard @purserhallard.com · 02/07/2026

(The human kids also play notorious plague-themed game Ring-a-ring-a-roses at the bottom left of the screen around the 10m30s mark. Damn, I wish I'd paid them more attention before.)

Screenshot of the Bridge from "The Steel Sky", all white pillars and control panels, plus some vegetation. In the bottom left-hand corner, four kids are holding hands and dancing in a ring.

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