Smoke was…

… a love-letter to London, to the wet neon flicker of late-night pavements, electric with endless possibility, and the soft dishevelled beauty of the city’s dawn… to the overheard stories and unexplored histories, the facts and the fictions, the accidental poetry and fugitive art of graffiti-slashed suburban stations and rain-splashed shopfronts… the out-of-shot lives half-glimpsed from a train window, or from a phone number scrawled on the back of a Travelcard, dropped on the night-bus stairs…

Founded in April 2003 by myself and Jude Rogers, Smoke – an A5 magazine of words and images inspired by London – published its 16th and last issue in the summer of 2010, and then relaunched itself online. The website continued to publish new work – and also archive old pieces from the magazine – until August 2014.

As well as the printed magazine, we also produced a board game, Soho!, and a book, From the Slopes of Olympus to the Banks of the Lea. Both of these, as well as back issues of the magazine, are still for sale – you can find out more and read some of the pieces at the SMOKE WEBSITE. (I know it looks like it’s not been updated for a while – because it hasn’t – but it all still functions, and the shop is still open!)