Keith Mansfield

Today, there are celebrations right across England – it’s Johnny Mackintosh’s birthday. Some might say the public are raising their glasses to the bard, for the 23rd April is also Shakespeare’s birth (and death) day. More likely still, they might claim pubs up and down the land are full to celebrate St George’s Day, that noble slayer of dragons. Isn’t Johnny every bit as heroic?

If Johnny were especially lucky, he might have a cake a little like the one baked for my birthday last year:

Readers of Johnny Mackintosh and the Spirit of London will know the book opens on Johnny’s birthday, but it wasn’t originally 23rd April. If I remember, I set the first day of the early drafts as 14 April, but eventually decided I needed to move a little later in the month for the chronology to coincide better with the final day of the football season.

Growing up in Nottingham, every year I’d participate in the St George’s Day Parade (as a cub and then scout), which was generally a pain as it often coincided with the FA Cup semifinals (only highlights) on the TV. It’s hard for people to imagine how starved of televised football we were back then.

More recently, St George seemed to have fallen out of fashion with the absurd position the English couldn’t celebrate our own patron saint. Here in London we’re still in the frankly rather strange position where we have a huge parade from Trafalgar Square on St Patrick’s Day (the patron saint of Ireland) yet there’s normally been next to nothing for St George himself. No offence to our Irish neighbours who I love dearly, but happily George is returning to prominence.

There are also celebrations for Shakespeare at the Globe on the south bank. Being a writer, it’s impossible not to be aware of the shadow of the most famous ever Britain, who looms over all our work. When I moved the date to 23rd April it was actually with a nod to the bard, as I’d heard that he lived in Shoreditch, which is the same part of London as me. Just before Christmas, the site of his original theatre was discovered about half a mile from my house. There’s not a lot left, as it was deconstructed in Shakespeare’s own lifetime with the timbers removed to be used in the building of a new theatre to show off his plays – the Globe. It would be funny if, one day, while performing Henry V there, the final line of the opening scene of Act 3 was spoken as:

Cry ‘God for Harry, England, and Johnny Mackintosh!’

Thursday March 5th 2009 is World Book Day, but only in Hackney, the other parts of the UK and in Ireland. The rest of the world celebrates World Book Day on 23rd April, coincidentally both William Shakespeare’s and Johnny Mackintosh’s birthdays, but here in the British Isles we like to ignore our famous sons and do things a little differently.

Hackney is close to where I live in London. Shakespeare’s original theatre is there, where he performed in person as well as having his plays first staged (before it was dismantled and the timbers used to construct The Globe on London’s south bank). Nowadays it’s home to another theatre, the famous Hackney Empire, and is represented in Parliament by Diane Abbott MP (a regular on my favourite telly show, This Week).

Throughout its history it’s been a haven for free-thinkers, partly because it’s just five miles outside the centre of historic London which meant people were able to give speeches there criticizing the state and the church that weren’t allowed any closer in (by an Act of Parliament long before Diane Abbott’s time).

It’s also where I shall be giving a little talk on World Book Day. I hope this shan’t be too subversive, even though I’ll explain how time travel is possible and why aliens are almost certain to exist in our galaxy, as well as discussing whether or not there was ever a real place called Atlantis.

If you want to listen and even get yourself a signed copy of Johnny Mackintosh and the Spirit of London, make your way to the Hackney Museum and Library for 4.30pm. The full address is

Hackney Museum

1 Reading Lane

London E1 1GQ

The event’s been organized by the fabulous Victoria Park Books and I’ll be there until around 6.30 and will be talking with two other writers, Belinda Hollyer and Gaby Halberstam. For younger readers, there’ll be some other authors too: David Lucas, Kevin Waldron, Carolyn Hink, Guy Bass and Will Gatti. We all look forward to meeting you.

There’s something wonderful about being in a museum after hours. Umberto Eco’s wonderful Foucault’s Pendulum opens with one of the protagonists hiding out in the Musée des Arts et Métiers, Paris. I was once invited to a party to celebrate the opening of a new gallery at the Science Museum in London and was able to slip away unnoticed, exploring the space section of the museum on my own with access never dreamt of during regular hours.

Last night, the Science Museum held one of its “Lates” sessions, a rather more official way of seeing the museum than my earlier nocturnal wanderings. And I noted, with disappointment, that this time, the route to the Apollo 10 capsule was barred. But it was good to see signed copies of Johnny Mackintosh  beside Harry Potter in the museum bookshop.

However, while most of the crowds were there to see the Japan Car exhibition, I’d gone along on another of my moon missions – to view the high-definition videos from SELENE, one of Japan’s satellites in lunar orbit.

In mythology, Selene is the name of the Greek equivalent of Luna and was a daughter of two Titans. Nowadays, the spacecraft is more often called Kaguya, the name chosen by the Japanese public after a beautiful lunar princess in a Japanese folk story (who rejects countless marriage proposals here on Earth before returning to her original home on the Moon). SELENE stands for SELenological and ENgineering Explorer

Although images from the satellite are high-definition and give a better view of overflying the Moon than we’ve had before, they were projected onto the screen in the Science Museum’s small theatre rather than its giant Imax, and were at the limits of magnification with some pixilation setting in, so still came across as pretty low-resolution. But it’s always a wonderful thing to see Earthrise.

It’s well worth taking a look at the dedicated youtube channel. Sadly, I’m not allowed embed the videos into this blog to give you a taster. The accompanying copy read “the closest you can get to flying over the moon”, but I’d argue that, for the very best Moon experience, you really have to see the Imax film Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon 3D. Now that, genuinely, is just like being there…

All the space images are copyright Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)

Political observers argue over the influence of Britain’s best-selling tabloid. Normally the paper supports the Conservatives and “It ’s The Sun wot won it” was a famous headline from April 1992 when John Major confounded the opinion polls to defeat Neil Kinnock and give the Tories their fourth straight election win.

Currently, I’m reading The Alastair Campbell Diaries (Arrow Books). Tony Blair and his chief spin doctor went to a lot of trouble to woo Rupert Murdoch and have The Sun on board to support Labour in the 1997 election, which they duly did. Was it The Sun wot won it again?

Now, in 2009, I’m delighted to say The Sun has come out for Johnny Mackintosh and the Spirit of London. I posted a copy of the new paperback to Natasha Harding who reviews books for the paper’s Something for the Weekend section. She sent me a lovely email back saying, “I started reading it last night, and although I’m not your target audience I think it’s great.”

I’m not sure that the paper has the same influence on the book-buying habits of its readers as it claims on their voting habits, but it’s great that they’ve joined the Daily Express in recommending Johnny and Clara’s adventures.

Johnny Mackintosh went into The Sun on Friday 23rd January. The full review reads:

JOHNNY MACKINTOSH AND THE SPIRIT OF LONDON by Keith Mansfield (Quercus, £6.99): Johnny is a 13-year-old who lives in a children’s home. He’s often in hot water for getting up to no good with the help of his dog Bentley.

As well as loving football, the youngster is a techno-wizz which has made him a firm favourite with his peers but not with the staff of Halader House.

When he runs away to find his sister he falls straight into alien hands and is sent into outer space.

In order to escape, he needs to find out who he really is – but could that mean he will never get to go home?

Although aimed at young lads this was a great read and I really enjoyed it.

If you click on the image you should see a larger version of the actual piece.

To read all the reviews of Johnny Mackintosh and the Spirit of London, go to the What other people say about Johnny Mackintosh page on the johnnymackintosh.com website. I have to say they’re all lovely and I’m grateful to everyone who’s written about the book.

Tomorrow, another milestone is reached in the young life of Johnny Mackintosh. Up until now, you’ve only been able to read about his adventures in one of those beautiful, but slightly bulky, hardbacks. From this point forwards, all good bookshops wil be selling the paperback as well.

The soft cover of Johnny Mackintosh and the Spirit of London is every bit as handsome as the original, but also features additional text on the front reading:

“Alex Rider meets Dr Who in an incredible adventure across time and space”

When I first pitched the series to my publisher, Quercus, is was as “Harry Potter meets Star Wars”, but I’m equally happy with their wording and the Dr Who reference admirably captures Johnny and Clara’s time-travelling adventures.

You might notice this announcement is the first entry for a while as I’m still very busy finishing off Johnny’s second story – oh to be able to travel in time myself, taking the manuscript with me, in order to complete it well ahead of schedule.

As I explain in the Science of Johnny Mackintosh, that’s sadly not possible, but I have had great fun during my school visits recently, talking about how any of us should soon be able to take a trip into the far future – but only on a one-way ticket.

My first ever school visit took me to Hounslow Manor in southwest London. Before last Friday, I confess the thought of facing “the youth of today” en masse made me slightly nervous, but the reality was that I’ve never been in a room with nearly fifty such polite, charming and enthusiastic pupils – certainly not when I was at school.

Before getting started I had five minutes to judge the winners of a poetry competition from a shortlist – this was impossible because the standard was incredibly high. I confess I wimped out and drew the names of the winners from out of a hat but I’d say to everyone whose poem was there, their entries were superb and I’m sure there are some future writers among the finalists.

I began trying to talk a little about story-telling. With a willing volunteer and a couple of trusty umbrellas (doubling as light sabres) I re-enacted the pivotal scene from Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back to demonstrate the beauty of a plot twist, before also talking about Harry Potter, probably the series that most influenced my writing.

We moved on through discussions of time travel (which clearly happens in Hounslow as some of the pupils had actually met Albert Einstein earlier that very day), the possible location of Atlantis and the existence of aliens. Of course those are all elements of the Johnny Mackintosh story and I hope whetted a few appetites for the book. Then I rushed through a reading of when Johnny (and Clara) are taken into space for the very first time.

The reason it was rushed was because I overran terribly, partly because of all the hands in the air while I was talking to my eager listeners. I didn’t want to ignore possible the best audience I’ll ever have, so I found myself stopping all the time to take questions (which I didn’t feel I did justice to properly). I was asked if there was a moral to my story, whether I’d seen the Transformers film, if you went back in time how could you bring the dead back to life, and zillions more, all of them fascinating and thought-provoking.

Looking back, I probably made the cardinal author’s sin of not saying enough about my own writing and book, so if there’s anyone from the school who wants to ask me a question they didn’t get to pose on the day, or one they felt I didn’t answer well enough, or they couldn’t even get to the talk so missed out on asking a burning question about Johnny Mackintosh and the Spirit of London, me or writing and stories in general, now’s your chance. If you leave a comment on this entry I promise to give you a considered reply.

And, finally, thanks to everyone for being such a wonderful audience.

A quick break from my self-imposed exile before I put the “Gone fishing” sign up again.

Michelson–Morley; Eddington’s expedition to the 1919 total solar eclipse; Edward Jenner injecting himself with smallpox; Pasteur’s S-shaped flasks; Millikan’s oil drops. If any readers are wondering what this seemingly random collection of words represents, they’re famous experiments in the history of science. Tomorrow sees the addition of another item to this list – the turning on of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.

Other than Eddington’s expedition, which left these shores to the island of Principe to verify or disprove the bizarre predictions of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity (that gravity could bend light), never has an experiment been quite so hyped. Having once applied to CERN for a summer job when I was still at school, I hope it’s understandable if I feel compelled to add my two-penneth.

There have been huge tunnels underneath the Swiss countryside (and crossing into France) for more than half a century. CERN’s where Tim Berners Lee developed the hypertext markup language that made the world wide web possible – the very first webserver was info.cern.ch. It’s a place where many notable scientific milestones have been achieved such as the creation of genuine antimatter in the form of anti-hydrogen atoms – now no longer the stuff of Star Trek. It was also where the weak nuclear force (which governs radioactive decay) was able to be combined with electromagnetism in one of the great steps along the way to that holy grail of physics – the grand unified theory (basically a theory of everything).

It’s hoped that the LHC will be able to explain one of the great asymmetries of the universe – why there appears to be so much more matter than antimatter. Another mystery that nearly everyone has been told about is the possible existence of the so-called “God particle”, the Higgs boson. It’s important because it could help explain why anything has mass at all. When we delve very deeply into the structure of matter, we find that almost all of it is made up of empty space. The once unbreakable atom became a tiny (but incredibly dense) nuclear core with distant, diffuse electrons in shells around it. Then the protons and neutrons that comprised the unbreakable atomic nucleus became made up of tiny quarks. What does it mean to have mass when matter itself is made of next to nothing? If the Higgs boson is found (and its identification is probably within the design spec of the LHC) then its associated Higgs Field provides a possible answer to the puzzle. If you want to hunt for Higgs yourself, try this interactive game from The Science Museum.

Some scientists and philosophers of science believe the process could go on forever – that we can keep dissecting and dissecting smaller and smaller “fundamental” particles. Others think the truth is just around the corner (officially the Higgs boson is the final piece of the jigsaw of what physicists call The Standard Model). In a way this mirrors the debate between the realists and the empiricists. Can scientific theories in some way be judged as “true”, an explanation of how the universe really is, or are they a useful tool that doesn’t claim to be a fundamental reality?

I fully expect the God particle to be found in due course, but I’m not sure how much further the idea of fundamental particles and the Standard Model can take us. Normally I stand in the empiricists camp, but when I step out to become a true blue realist I enjoy the mathematical; beauty of ideas such as Garrett Lisi’s E8-based “exceptionally simple theory of everything”. In this, the Higgs particle comes out of the geometry as just one way of looking at things, and there are others.

That’s one of the joys of physics. For instance, an atom of antimatter hydrogen can be viewed as having a negatively charged proton (an anti-proton) as its nucleus and a positively charged electron (a positron) around the outside, but it can also be viewed as an atom of regular hydrogen travelling backwards in time. Or you can just look at it through a bathroom mirror.

However you look at the universe, I’m delighted that the fuss about it ending tomorrow has apparently died down. Safe in the knowledge that the Earth isn’t about to be swallowed by an artificially created black hole or than Big Bang the 2nd won’t begin somewhere near Geneva on 10 September 2008, I shall take up my fishing rod and return to the luminiferous ether (disproved by Michelson and Morley) to keep writing Johnny Mackintosh and the Fountain of Time.

Apologies that this blog is notable for its lack of updates at present. It’s not that I don’t have numerous ideas with which to swell the blogosphere – the thing is I also have a book to write, so I’m temporarily putting up the “Gone Fishing” sign.

For the time being I need to dedicate all my writing efforts to finishing the second in the Johnny Mackintosh series. And as a treat for those who’ve made it all the way to the end of this apology, I offer a reward of sorts. You can be the first to learn that my working title for book two is Johnny Mackintosh and the Fountain of Time. I hope you like it.

I love elections. This year in London we’ve seen Boris versus Ken, while in the US it’s going to be McCain versus Obama in November. But there’s another poll, happening right now, that you can all take part in – it’s called the Big Science Read.

The Big Science Read was launched at Jodrell Bank, the giant radio telescope that actually features in the second Johnny Mackintosh book. Despite being a feature of the Cheshire landscape for over fifty year, the Lovell Telescope is still the world’s third-largest fully steerable telescope in the world.

The people behind the contest have helpfully divided suggested books into fact or fiction categories. Perhaps because they couldn’t decide whether or not Johnny Mackintosh and the Spirit of London is based on a true story, they’ve left it off their list but you can still vote for it.

I believe it’s important that everyone has some understanding of science, how it works and how to evaluate the reports we see in the media. Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science column in the Saturday Guardian is something everyone should read. With Johnny Mackintosh, I thought it important to infuse the story with as much genuine science as possible, sitting quietly in the background, although never at the expense of the actual story-telling.

My aim was that the book would play a role in inspiring younger readers to discover more about the world (and indeed the universe) around them. I hope the use of science in fiction has worked. If you think it might have done, vote now.