Duncan Fallowell

Duncan Fallowell is an English novelist, travel writer, journalist and critic (see also entries in Oxford Companion to English Literature, 7th edition; and current Who's Who)

He was born on 26 September 1948 in London. His family later moved to Somerset and Essex before settling in Berkshire. While at St Paul's School, London, he established a friendship with John Betjeman and, through him, links to literary London. In 1967 he went to Magdalen College, Oxford (B.A., M.A. - History). At the university he was a pupil of Karl Leyser, Hugh Trevor-Roper and Howard Colvin. He was also part of a group experimenting with psychedelic drugs. While an undergraduate he became a friend of the trans-sexual April Ashley (whose biography he later wrote ) and familiar with the 'Chelsea Set' of Swinging London.

In 1970, at the age of 21, Fallowell was given a pop column in the Spectator. He was subsequently the magazine's film critic and fiction critic. During the 1970s he travelled in Europe, India and the Far East, collaborated on the punk glossies Deluxe and Boulevard, and worked with the avant-garde German group Can. He began writing about Can in the British press in 1970 and explored other aspects of the German rock scene at the beginning of the 1970s, visiting Berlin, Munich and Hamburg. He wrote verbal covers to many of Can singer Damo Suzuki's non-linguistic vocals and when Damo left the band in 1973 Fallowell was asked if he'd like to take over as vocalist - 'after a long dark night of the soul,' he decided against it (see Prospect magazine March 28, 2008).

In 1979 he edited a collection of short stories, Drug Tales. This was followed by two novels, Satyrday and The Underbelly.Chris Petit reviewing The Underbelly for The Times wrote: 'The author's pose and prose is that of dandy as cosh-boy...The writing attains a sort of frenzied detachment found in the drawings of Steadman or Scarfe.'.

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