#byzantium!

[do-you-know-this-dw-story]

byzantium! (novel: 2001)

do you know this doctor who story?

yes, i have read it

yes, i have read parts of it

i have heard of it & plan to read

i have only heard of it

no, i have never heard of it

Voting ended onDec 18, 2025

[thedoctorwhocompanion]

Horror in Who: Self

Horror in Who: Self

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, what frightens humans most of all…? Across a startlingly excessive array of serials, Doctor Who demonstrates distillations of us, horrific intentions behind our own visages. They look like us; they sound like us; they use us; they are us. Monsters, it turns out, come in many forms. Invasion of the Body Snatchers Like Clara, we are all, to some degree, control freaks.…

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[thechestertons]

Julia looked down at the still-silent boy. 'And this little man, I've already met. What do you want to be when you grow up, Johnny?' she asked, kneeling down beside him. Johnny unwrapped himself from his mother's side and grinned broadly. 'I want to be a top pop star like Julian Blake. Or Mr Big Hat out of Slade.' 'I'll buy all of your records,' said Julia, charmed by Johnny's cheeky, ragamuffin smile. 'He's so sweet. Can I take him back to Redborough with me?' 'Oh, don't encourage him, for goodness sake,' Barbara said, wryly. 'He's a dreamer, this one. Last week he wanted to be an astronaut. Next week it'll be something different.'

John Chesterton has his future ambition picked out at the age of six in Byzantium!

[thechestertons]

'... And what is your name then, young man?' The little boy stopped pretending to be Tony Green (Newcastle United and Scotland) dribbling brilliantly around the static (and imaginary) Chelsea back-four, and looked up at the pretty lady and her bewitching smile. 'Hello,' he said, without a trace of inhibition. 'I'm John Alydon Ganatus Chesterton.' He held out a delicate child's hand which the woman took and shook, gently. 'And I'm six-and-a-half,' he continued, precociously. 'How do you do?' 'Bet you're only six-and-a-quarter, really?' she asked. Johnny grinned with a gap-toothed smile. 'Those are unusual names,' the lady noted. Johnny nodded, half of his attention on the lady's clear sea-green eyes, the other half drawn to the fabulous exhibits around him. 'They were friends of my mummy and daddy,' he replied in a well-rehearsed little speech. 'They live in a place a long way away.' [...] Barbara appeared from around a nearby corner with an irritated scowl on her face. 'There you are,' she scolded. 'What have I told you about running off like that?' Johnny looked at his shoes and said nothing. There was an embarrassed silence before anyone spoke. 'Don't be too hard on him,' said the woman, kindly. 'We were talking.' Barbara shrugged her shoulders. 'He can be a bit of a handful,' she confided and then playfully ruffled Johnny's hair. 'Can't you?' she asked. Her son continued to cling, mutely, to his mother's dress with a contrite look on his face. 'He's at that age where everything's one big adventure. Which is just fine for him, but it's a right pain in the neck for everyone else.' She paused and looked down at her son. Her stern expression remained until the urchin holding her tightly melted her icy heart to slush.

John Chesterton introduces himself in Byzantium!

[thechestertons]

[Barbara] was trying, in vain, to remember where the quotation was actually from. What the context was. Who had said it, and why. The situation was similar to her first year at university when she had become drunk for the first (and so far only) time and had needed to negotiate a lengthy mile-and-a-half trek through darkest Cricklewood with only the most basic of directional and sensory equipment still functioning in her brain. She had invented a little game attempting to read, out loud, road signs and car number plates. Anything, in fact, that would help her to stay alert while simultaneously cursing the very name of the spotty, immaturelegal student who had introduced her to the satanic qualities of gin and tonic. Herbert Effemy.

Byzantium!

[thechestertons]

There is a shade of paint, a kind of burnt orange that the colour charts of hardware shops identify as Arabian Sunset. Barbara Wright once used it on the walls of the scullery of her little flat in Kensal Rise. It helped to give the place more light on the long evenings of an English winter when the television finished at 10:30 and she would read. by candlelight, some of the second-hand history books that she bought from shops on the Charing Cross Road, to save putting another shilling in the electric meter.

Byzantium!

[thechestertons]

'I was trained as a fighter, it's true,' Ian agreed, wondering whether six months spent whitewashing doorsteps at RAF Lynham truly counted as such. 'I studied some oriental disciplines; karate, ju jitsu and unagi.'

Byzantium!

[thechestertons]

Calaphilus gave little away with a bland and expressionless poker-style face that stared hack at Ian Chesterton.'You allege that you are from Londinium?' he asked. 'Yes,' Ian replied quickly. 'Well, at least, I live there now. I am a teacher... A scribe, if you like. I was actually born in Reading, know it at all?'

Byzantium!