Famed comic book writer, Alan Moore, best known for his work on Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and From Hell, has found himself battling against the Northampton council following the council’s plans to close local libraries. Moore has even gone as far as to threaten to halt filming on a TV project he’s working on that would have been filmed in Northampton.
The 63-year-old writer was born in Northampton and told the Northampton Chronicle & Echo that it was thanks to his local libraries that he became a writer. “The facilities that I relied upon when I grew up in a house that didn’t have many books… but there was always the library,” he said. “It was a treasured institution that made me what I am.
“When I was five, I was getting my mother to take me up there once or twice a week so that I could take out four books, that was the maximum you could borrow at any one time. And I would read them within three or four days and come back for some more. That was where I read most of the books that inspired me.”
The Northampton council revealed plans last week that would see savings of over £9.6 million. Part of this plan will be to “re-design” the library system and see 28 libraries across the county shut its doors in favour of 21 smaller, community run libraries. Were this plan to go ahead, it would apparently save up to £290,000.
Moore described the plans as “completely unacceptable and completely monstrous” and added that, should the plans go ahead, he will stop “two or three seasons” of an upcoming BBC television series that he’s involved with from being filmed in Northampton. The television series will follow a film that is set to be shot and, whilst Moore has admitted he can’t prevent the film from going ahead, he can and will halt the series.
Moore stated that his history with Northampton and involvement with the TV series “makes me a kind of poster boy that is somehow validating the disaster zone that they are making of Northampton”.
“If this continuing destruction and pillaging of the town’s resources then the potentially much more lucrative and much more effective – in terms of giving the town a profile – that televisions series will either not be going ahead or not going ahead in Northampton,” he told the local paper, “because I’ve had enough of this”.
Poisonous books removed from the National Library of France
Book Returned to Scottish Library 73 Years Late
Librarian discovers cash inside book returned 53 years late
