Brentford is a suburban town in West London, England and part of the London Borough of Hounslow. It lies at the confluence of the River Brent and the Thames, 8 miles (13 km) west of Charing Cross.
The Brentford Trilogy is a series of twelve novels by writer Robert Rankin. They humorously chronicle the lives of a couple of drunken middle-aged layabouts, Jim Pooley and John Omally, who confront the forces of darkness in the environs of West London, usually with the assistance of large quantities of beer from their favourite public house, The Flying Swan.
Robert Fleming Rankin is a prolific British author of comedic fantasy novels. Born in Parsons Green, London, he started writing in the late 1970s, and first entered the bestsellers lists with Snuff Fiction in 1999, by which time his previous eighteen books had sold around one million copies. His books are a mix of science fiction, fantasy, the occult, urban legends, running gags, metafiction, steampunk and outrageous characters. According to the biography printed in some Corgi editions of his books, Rankin refers to his style as 'Far Fetched Fiction' in the hope that bookshops will let him have a section to himself. Many of Rankin's books are bestsellers.
Brentford Football Club is a professional association football club based in Brentford, West London, England. The team competes in the Premier League, the top tier of English football. Nicknamed "The Bees", the club was founded in 1889 and played home matches at Griffin Park from 1904 before moving to the Brentford Community Stadium in 2020.
The Return of the King is a 1980 American-Japanese animated musical fantasy television film created by Rankin/Bass and Topcraft. It is an adaptation of part of J. R. R. Tolkien's 1955 high fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings. It takes its name from The Return of the King, the third and final volume of the novel, and is a sequel to the 1977 film The Hobbit.
Griffin Park was a football ground in Brentford in the London Borough of Hounslow, England. It was the home ground of Brentford F.C. from its opening in September 1904 to August 2020. The ground was in a predominantly residential area and was known for being the only English league football ground to have a pub on each corner. The ground's name referred to the griffin featured in the logo of Fuller's Brewery, which at one point owned the orchard on which the stadium was built.
Watermans Art Centre is a combined arts centre. It is located in Brentford, England alongside the banks of the River Thames overlooking Kew Gardens in West London, England.
The Brightonomicon is a novel by British fantasy author Robert Rankin. The title parodies that of the fictional grimoire Necronomicon from the Cthulhu Mythos. The author lives in Brighton, England, and the book is set in an accurate fictional depiction of the town. The book is based on "The Brighton Zodiac", a map consisting of carriageway constellations found in the city of Brighton and Hove, similar to the purported landscape zodiacs of Glastonbury and Kingston. The 2010 edition features a new cover design and internal illustrations by Rankin himself, who studied at the Ealing School of Art and worked briefly as an illustrator in the 1970s.
Brentford is a town in Middlesex, West of London in England.
Isaiah Marcus Rankin is an English former professional footballer who played as a forward from 1996 to 2014.
Set in Darkness is a 2000 crime novel by Ian Rankin. It is the eleventh of the Inspector Rebus novels. It won the 2005 Grand Prix du Roman Policier (France) under the title Du fond des ténèbres.
The Antipope is a comic fantasy novel by the British author Robert Rankin. It is Rankin's first novel, and the first book in the Brentford Trilogy which, as of 2020, consists of 10 novels. The book was first published in 1981 by Pan Books, and from 1991 by Corgi books, an imprint of Transworld Publishers. Although typically found in the science fiction section of bookshops, it is a difficult novel to categorise; Rankin himself joked that he wanted to create a new genre of fiction, called "Far Fetched Fiction", so that he would have his own bookshelf in Smiths.
Sex and Drugs and Sausage Rolls is a 1999 novel by the British author Robert Rankin. Set in Brentford near London, it is one of the eleven novels in Rankin's Brentford Trilogy. The book features the series' drunken protagonists John Omally and Jim Pooley.
Charles Thomas George Brodie was a Scottish professional footballer who played as a goalkeeper.
East of Ealing is a novel by Robert Rankin published in 1984. It is the third novel in Rankin's Brentford Trilogy.
Erika Mitchell, known by her pen name E. L. James, is a British author. She wrote the best-selling Fifty Shades series of erotic romance novels, which spawned a multimedia franchise including a film trilogy of the same name. Prior to this, she wrote the Twilight fan fiction "Master of the Universe" that served as the basis for the Fifty Shades series under the web name Snowqueens Icedragon. In 2019 she published her first book unconnected with the fictional world of Fifty Shades, The Mister, to negative critical reaction.
Robert Booker is an English former footballer who primarily played as a midfielder but often filled other roles in his later years. Born in Watford, England he started his career at Brentford in 1978 where he spent ten seasons playing in the lower divisions before switching to Sheffield United with whom he enjoyed his most successful period, gaining two promotions and playing in the top flight. He returned to Brentford for a further two seasons before injuries prompted him to retire. A spell on the coaching staff at Brentford was followed by a period as assistant manager at Brighton & Hove Albion where he was twice installed as caretaker manager during his tenure.
During the 1995–96 English football season, Brentford competed in the Football League Second Division. After spending over two mid-season months in the relegation places, the club achieved a 15th-place finish. A bright spot was a run to the fourth round of the FA Cup, falling to First Division high-flyers Charlton Athletic.
During the 1983–84 English football season, Brentford competed in the Football League Third Division. A season of transition ended with a narrow escape from relegation.
The 2020 EFL Championship play-off final was an association football match which was played on 4 August 2020 at Wembley Stadium, London, between Brentford and Fulham, a West London derby. The match was to determine the third and final team to gain promotion from the EFL Championship, the second tier of English football, to the FA Premier League. The top two teams of the 2019–20 EFL Championship season gained automatic promotion to the Premier League, while the clubs placed from third to sixth place in the table took part in play-off semi-finals; Brentford ended the season in third position while Fulham finished fourth. The winners of these semi-finals competed for the final place for the 2020–21 season in the Premier League. Cardiff City and Swansea City were the losing semi-finalists.
