About

This site — very much a work in (slow) progress — is dedicated to the memory of Ian Covell (1953–2019), for many years my good friend and co-bibliographer.

In 1989, the monthly publication, Book And Magazine Collector, ran a piece on Michael Moorcock. Being an avid reader of his work, and obsessed with the interconnectedness of all things Moorcockian, I contacted the magazine to say how dreadfully inaccurate their article was. They, in turn, told me that Moorcock himself had just been in touch — to say how dreadfully inaccurate their article was — and that they should contact an Ian Covell for corrections. Ian and I began to correspond and, inevitably, became co-bibliographers of one of the largest and most diverse œuvres of all time.

(I did get to do my own B.&M.C. piece some years later, and thus helped to redress the [cosmic] balance a little.)

Ian and I planned for a long time thereafter to produce the definitive Moorcock bibliography until several factors (not least of which was the rise and instantaneity of the Internet) made its completion seem somewhat surplus to requirements. Then, just before Christmas 2019, I was made aware of his untimely death (he had been variously unwell for some time). Now that he’s gone, I am hoping that this fledgeling website will go on — in time — to resemble what any printed version (had we managed it) might have looked like.

Ian and I, my wife Maureen, and long-time Moorcock archivist D.J. Rowe, co-edited The Time Centre Times for The Nomads Of The Time Streams (The International Michael Moorcock Appreciation Society) from 1993 to 2011. Sadly, D.J. also died, earlier this year (2020), and it seems fitting to add his name alongside Ian’s in this website’s dedication. Our shared love of Michael Moorcock put us in touch with each other to begin with, and remained a constant and joyfully common theme throughout all those years. I shall miss them both a great deal.

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(Update: 31st December, 2020) There is sadly now another name to add alongside Ian’s and D.J.’s in this website’s dedication, that of David Britton — co-founder (with Michael Butterworth) of Savoy Books — who died (in hospital) in the early hours of 29th December. Like Ian, he had been variously unwell for some time. He was another good friend of mine for some thirty years, Ian and I having first met the ‘Savoyards’ through our early bibliographical researches; David was the only collector I’ve ever met whose enthusiasm could be traced all the way back to Moorcock’s editorship of Tarzan Adventures in the mid-1950s.

Anyone who has read this page can be in no doubt as to my admiration for Michael Moorcock, who has always inspired me; always does and always will.  The only other person whose company I would leave feeling equally fired up, to be the best that I can be, was David Britton.

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There’s by no means a shortage of bibliographical (and other) websites about Moorcock, each blessed with widely varying degrees of accuracy, completeness and insight. The goal of this one is ultimately to be the best of them all, but it will take a very long time to reach that point. For the moment, it just serves the more simple purpose of honouring my friend(s).

If anyone has any additions, comments, corrections or queries, please feel free to visit the Contact page.

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“The War is ceaseless. The most we can hope for are occasional moments of tranquillity in the midst of the conflict.”

— Lobkowitz, from The Warlord Of The Air (1971).