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 eleven 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.
Detective Inspector John Rebus is the protagonist in the Inspector Rebus series of detective novels by the Scottish writer Sir Ian Rankin, ten of which have so far been televised as Rebus. The novels are mostly set in and around Edinburgh. Rebus has been portrayed by John Hannah and Ken Stott for Television, with Ron Donachie playing the character for the BBC Radio dramatisations.
Sir Ian James Rankin is a Scottish crime writer, best known for his Inspector Rebus novels.
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.
Knees Up Mother Earth is the seventh book by Robert Rankin in the Brentford Trilogy, as well as the second book in The Witches of Chiswick trilogy.
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.
The Inspector Rebus books are a series of detective novels by the Scottish author Sir Ian Rankin. The novels, centred on Detective Inspector John Rebus, are mostly based in and around Edinburgh. They are considered an important contribution to 'Tartan Noir'.
The Witches Of Chiswick is a novel by the British author Robert Rankin, the title parodying that of The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike.
The Book of Ultimate Truths is a novel by British author Robert Rankin. The plot revolves around the adventures of Cornelius Murphy and his companion Tuppe. The novel was first published by Doubleday in 1993. It ranked number 5 in the Science Fiction & Fantasy category on The Independent on Sunday bestseller list.
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.
Knots and Crosses is a 1987 crime novel by Ian Rankin. It is the first of the Inspector Rebus novels. It was written while Rankin was a postgraduate student at the University of Edinburgh. In the introduction to this novel, Rankin states that Rebus lives directly opposite the window in Marchmont that he looked out of while writing the book.
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.
Nostradamus Ate My Hamster is a fantasy novel by British author Robert Rankin. In it, several seemingly unconnected and nonsensical events come together to make perfect clarity at the end; these include time travel and an attempted alien invasion vaguely orchestrated by Hitler.
Lazlo Woodbine is a fictional character in some of Robert Rankin's novels. He is generally portrayed as a metafictional character, being in the novels themselves the creation of mystery writer P.P. Penrose and described by himself as the last of the nineteen-fifties private detectives.
Martin Charles Strong is a Scottish music historian known for compiling discographies of popular music including The Great Rock Discography. Strong has been described in broadsheet newspaper profiles as a "compiler of acclaimed mammoth discographies" and "a man who knows more about rock music than is healthy for one individual".
East of Ealing is a novel by Robert Rankin published in 1984. It is the third novel in Rankin's Brentford Trilogy.
The Dark Remains is a Scottish crime novel of the tartan noir genre set in Glasgow. Part-written by William McIlvanney who left a half-finished handwritten draft when he died in 2015, the novel was completed by Ian Rankin and published in 2021. See Canongate website, with interview with Ian Rankin:
