Matt Haig

Something fun. Simply comment or tag someone who would like it for a chance to read The Midnight Train MONTHS before publication. Merry Christmas!

Stand by Me. I mean. Yes to When Harry Met Sally. To Misery. To Spinal Tap. To the whole Rob Reiner collection. But mainly - Stand by Me. Stand by Me is my favourite film of all time. You know when you watch a film at the right moment in your life and it stays with you for all time, like it is a part of you? It is based on a short story - ‘The Body’ by Stephen King but no disrespect to the master the film is better. It adds something so warm and real to it. The story is simple. As small and simple as it gets. Four boys hear of a dead body in the woods and go on a journey to see it. On the way the adventure becomes a defining moment in their lives. It is the ultimate 80s film. Even the fact that it is set in the 1950s doesn’t stop that. The 1950s were massive in the 1980s, from Back to the Future to Grease reruns to Happy Days to quiffs and drainpipes. It is an 80s film because it manages to be accessible and high quality in every breath. Because it has the two most 1980s faces - those of Corey Feldman and River Phoenix. Because it is based on Stephen King. Because it looks so good as it was shot on Kodak film rather than digital, rendering the colours rich and deep. Because it was edgy in a gentle real way, rather than a pointless gross out way (cherry pie scene excepted). Anyway. It’s a film with heart and humanity and leeches. And on the day Donald Trump insults a dead man in his grotesque style it is poignantly ironic that one of Rob Reiner’s greatest works involves artistic, sensitive, narrow shouldered kids having to face up to big bullies. I never saw it at the cinema. I got it from the video store on a day I played truant. Then rented it many times over. When River Phoenix says to Will Wheaton: ‘I’m never gonna get out of this town am I, Gordie?’ I felt it like rain. And then the answer came: ‘You can do anything you want, man.’ Worth a million podcasts. As with the book The Outsiders, Stand by Me gave Gen X boys broad role models. Not good as in goody goody. Good as in boys who aren’t toxic douches. Just real true troubled human beings. Heartfelt humanity. Thank you, sir.

I went to see Les Mis again yesterday. When people watch Les Mis their feelings are uniformly where Victor Hugo intended them to be when he wrote the novel - on the side of the dispossessed, the poor, the desperate, the revolutionaries, the people forced by circumstance into sex work, the people so desperate they have to steal and break the law, the people who can’t afford theatre tickets. And obviously there would be people in that theatre who will be voting against those same real life people come election time. Because they will have been bombarded by Telegraph and Mail headlines into fear by then. But it’s interesting isn’t it? How our classic, big staples of the arts make us lean towards social justice. I mean, think of refugees alone. Think of all the classic movies and books about them. The Sound of Music, The Kite Runner, Casablanca, Doctor Zhivago, Schindler’s List, Hotel Rwanda, even The Godfather… Think of Star Wars and its resistance to empire. Think of Dickens, the Victorian writer who is more box office than 99 percent of modern screenwriters and one of the most political writers ever. A Christmas Carol and Oliver Twist, both being responses to lesser or greater degrees to the right wing Poor Law that had been set up in 1834 and caused the moralising of poverty similar to the moralising of the migrant ‘crisis’ we now see. That is not interpretation. That is blatantly what they are. It is no coincidence when politicians ignore or deprioritise or defund the arts. It is no coincidence that Nigel Farage doesn’t mention one word about the arts in any Reform policy documents (unlike the Greens and even Labour). It is no coincidence that in America MAGA demonises and belittles the arts from Hollywood to school librarians while raising up cage fighting and bro culture. It is no coincidence Elon Musk has used the words ‘theatre kid’ as an insult at least ten times. The arts are where we find our best selves. If we want a better world we need them funded. And we need them on every news broadcast, right beside the sport. After all, they bring in more money. And like sport they make us live longer. Sermon over. Happy Sunday.

I am going on TOUR. I am going to talk as honestly as I can about everything from books to mental illness to neurodiversity to parallel lives to time travel to the world and I will do so without the bottle of vodka I used to have backstage. Six years ago I wrote The Midnight Library but a global pandemic happened and I never went on tour. So this is a tour for both The Midnight Train and The Midnight Library. These are the UK dates. Nice venues for chats and to meet everyone. Not too big not too small. There will be more dates later on in the UK and US and Canada and Germany and hopefully other places. But for now this is it and tickets are already going fast, especially in London and Manchester. So get on it. If you want. But help me out. Where else do you want me to visit?