Neil Gaiman in conversation with Claire Armitstead - June 2013

Dressed in black and based in the US, Neil Gaiman has, in the past decade, become an author hero among readers of all ages, including the 1.8 million who follow him on Twitter. In prize-winning, best-selling novels including Coraline, Neverwhere, American Gods and The Graveyard Book, he combines the everyday and the other-worldly, drawing on sources from English folklore, science fiction, fantasy, horror and fairytales to rock music and the Midrash. An element of enchantment runs through all his work. To mark the publication of The Ocean at the End of the Lane, an unsettling and very personal fable about memory, magic and survival, he is making one public appearance in London. Interviewed by the Guardian's literary editor, Claire Armitstead, he reflects on the boundaries between children's and adult literature; the appeal of working in multiple forms - such as comics, picture books and screenplays; the writers - from Kipling to Edgar Allan Poe - who have most influenced him; and the lure of darkness.

[@kandirussell5024]

I was destined to see this video. My roommate's girlfriend left scratch off's named "loose change" on the back of the toilet this morning... Then I saw two more at the convenience store beside misplaced cans of pet food 😂... Maybe that's a stretch but I love this interview!

[@caryleedavisvideo]

I love Neil Gaiman and he's always amazing. My only suggestion for cities where audiences like this one (London) are comprised of people of whom 75% or more are obviously and tragically infected with whooping cough, pneumonia, COPD, asthma, black lung and or post nasal drip, is that upon entering Mr. Gaiman storm the stage in an uncharacteristically zany fashion and fire a "cough drop cannon" into the crowd before he starts. Then perhaps somewhere into his talk as the members of the audience begin going into their final, fatal, raucously thundering and most likely very wet coughing spasms they'll look down at the thousands of cough drops littering the auditorium and pop one into their mouth, or perhaps those around them that are still strong enough to help can quietly push one of said lozenges into the sloppy maws of the dying so that they may die quietly and quickly so that we can hear what this great writer is saying. But at least he didn't have to put up with a baby squawking randomly for the entire 20 minute commencement speech he was hired to give in Philadelphia, one of the cities in the world where it's common knowledge that babies do squawk and commencements are given once in a lifetime events and perhaps that fact should prevent the staff from letting the commencement and the squawking baby occupy the same sonic space. kzbin.info/www/bejne/pp3alquZnslgocM Oh wait. Perhaps he did have to put up with that. Finally, as I’ve said, he's an amazing author and the fact that he wasn't perturbed in the slightest by these very preventable distractions at these two appearances doesn't mean the next venue should open up a fucking karaoke mike with 11 drunks singing "my heart will go on" in Vietnamese just stage left of the author. Neil, you're one hell of a writer and a real mensch.

[@RelaxxationStation]

I love that how he knows to put a grown up back to a childhood

[@RelaxxationStation]

master story teller

[@archaeobard1]

Heh, the cat would be the FIRST thing to conspire to ruin your day, lol.

[@joshuahext9015]

This is the most chaotic I've ever seen Neil

[@embelslishments]

Would have been nice to have a warning that this is full of spoilers!

[@sattarabus]

Claire is rapt attention incarnate. So are the audience. The itinerant griots of North Africa----they are on the verge of extinction----can take lessons from Neil in the art of story telling. The magic wand does not show, but he on honeydew has fed and drunk the milk of paradise.

[@oldgit4260]

Prof Sattar Basra the stars aligned and guided the pen, except those stars have demented outlooks on the 3rd dimension. A dimension of confusion and computer monitors with too much information. Decaying Horsemen gallop ever nearer..