About Guardian City
Guardian City is a splinter of London – cut loose in 1666 and still trying to catch up.
It shares London’s geography, but not its timeline. Scientists disagree whether it lies in the distant past or far future. Most residents avoid the question. It’s simply when it is.
Officially, Guardian City is the capital of the Warden Commonwealth. It houses the Shimmering Parliament, the main docks of the Obscure Trading Company, and the origin-point of the River Thames, one place in the two cities that is common.
In 1668, two years after the Rift, the cities made contact across the temporal barrier now known as the Quarrel. Diplomatic relations were tense. A compromise was reached: the Book of Parallels, a shared urban treaty designed to ensure Guardian City would mimic London’s layout – street for street, bridge for bridge, borough for borough. It worked. More or less.
Should Guardian City and London ever rejoin – an act referred to as the Convergence – their infrastructures might align. Their cultures, less so.
Guardian City tell the stories of lowborn rascals and big-hearted dreamers who, despite their flaws and the odds stacked against them, persist with resilience and ingenuity.
From eccentric capers to emotional adventures to tales of crime and hard-bitten skulduggery, each story is a twisting journey with a cast of colourful characters.
I invite you to enjoy a jaunt in the company of endearing eccentrics who, like everybody, just want to get on the best way they know how.
If you want to know more about how Guardian City works, check out the FAQs or go to the Map page.
About Giles Broadbent
Giles Broadbent is a distinguished editor, journalist, columnist and designer, boasting multiple awards across his career.
With a background that spans column writing and criticism to executive positions and consultancy, he has impacted print and digital media throughout the UK.
Among his notable achievements is his contribution to the establishment of Metro, which now holds the title of the UK’s largest circulation newspaper.
Residing on the Thames in the Docklands, Giles became a prominent chronicler of East London life. As editor and reporter, working in Canary Wharf, he has documented the creative and digital renaissance of the new East End and told stories of political corruption, violent crime, regeneration and riverside living.
It is with this in-depth knowledge of the Thames and the industrial heritage of East London and the docks that he draws inspiration for the Guardian City series.
As well as writing, Giles is engaged in PR and communications, co-manages Ravengate Publishing with his business partner, and offers his expertise as a book consultant, designer, and editor.
Ask me anything
How did you develop your passion for storytelling?
I have always written, always told stories. They are fundamental. I chose a career in journalism so I could write stories as a (mostly reliable) profession while maintaining a side passion for fiction. I also developed a fascination for editing and design because they are often underrated as tools in the arsenal of the story-teller. At the heart of everything I do, though, are words, the basic building block of my creativity, and my existence, actually.
Can you share a little about your 'creative process'?
Like most creatives, I struggle endlessly and pointlessly in an attempt to codify a process. It is essentially intangible, alchemic and magical – frustrating, horrible, transcendant too. I have spent many hours trying to create a surefire replicable method, a 1-2-3 to produce guaranteed results. These processes help enormously, of course, but the main business of creativity happens elsewhere, out of sight and mysteriously. Beautiful, if frustrating.
Currently, who are your favourite and influential genres and authors?
I love a rip-roaring story, doesn’t matter how it’s written. But my favoured authors tend to be very British and very witty and satirical writers like Martin Amis, Douglas Adams, PG Wodehouse and Charles Dickens. Meanwhile, I love the louche slang of US hard-boiled authors including the masterly Elmore Leonard, James Ellroy and Don Winslow. And a late addition to my library is muscular sci-fi so special mentions for China Mieville and – just lately – Adrian Tchaikovsky.
What do you find most challenging about writing fiction compared to your journalism?
It’s all simple/impossible depending on the day. With journalism, you’re sharing a common experience with your readers so there’s a lot that’s understood and can be left beneath the surface. In fiction, you have to create it all. I prefer to be engaged with character and action but you do have to explain how the world works – how they get from A to B. It’s one of the reasons I founded the Guardian City Shuffle (a soon to be launched magazine) to bring the two practices closer together. What would happen, I wondered, if I tackled Guardian City in the same way I write about east London?
What is your connection to East London?
I’m not from London. In fact, I came to East London late. I always assumed that London was like the West End – crowded and glitzy – and when I first saw the Royal Docks – the acres of water and space, I was blown away. I couldn’t believe all this (then derelict) land was just a few miles from the centre of everything. There was a family connection as well, because my dad was a customs officer when the Docks were still operational in the 60s. I moved there when I worked for Metro. When I worked on a newspaper at The O2 and I set my sights on editing The Wharf [newspaper] just because I thought it was the most magical place, a blend of heritage, dynamism, energy, and a hint of menace and lots and lots of water. It’s home now.
What is it you love about the Thames?
I live right beside the river. Have to. That was always my dream. I watch it every day and it’s never boring, never the same. I watch huge cruise liners pass, monstrous warships, London barges, paddle steamers, super yachts. There’s a tug station outside my window so it feels very industrial and purposeful. During the 2012 Olympics there was a gathering of tall ships, glorious three-masted beauties, coming and going and berthed outside my window. It was like a scene from the 18th century (or Guardian City!). Plus, there are all the water birds and wildlife. Different colours, different moods, different scenery. It’s a three-act drama every day, all for me (it seems).
What drew you to the theme of blending historical settings with fantastical elements?
I wanted to write about London, especially East London, as I have done for years, because it is a fascinating place where different strands and cultures of society rub along mostly peacefully and certainly productively. But also I like the idea of taking my imagination for a walk, inventing eccentric characters with strange obsessions in outlandish societies. I like a bit of magic too – although not too much as it can become a Get Out Of Jail Free card in plotting. So developing Guardian City – which aspires to be like London, and is inflected and influenced by London, but decidedly isn’t London – seemed like a perfect solution. Weird, in fact, that it took me so long to figure this out.
How do you balance your roles in PR, communications, and writing fiction?
Precariously and with some albeit inconsistent success. Perhaps this best sums up my productivity: I have written a book on time management. It’s almost done apart from a final polish and some updating. But I’ve never really found the time to complete the job. It’s been sitting there since Covid. Even studying time management has never got me much closer to mastering it.
How do you rise to the challenge of being productive?
Habit. The one lesson I did learn from studying time management is that habit is infinitely more powerful and reliable than inspiration. I used to write a weekly column for a newspaper with a deadline of Tuesday evening, for the Wednesday paper. I would be clueless about the subject matter for an entire week and yet it would come to me on Tuesday evening. Something about the habit of a deadline had given me a helpful assistant working away in the background. Habits are a free superpower.
How do you handle writer’s block?
I don’t believe in writer’s block per se. There are periods where I procrastinate – which is another (dreadful) affliction entirely – and the cure for this is generally just to do the thing, to start, regardless of purpose and merit. Indeed, free yourself up from the burden of Capital W “Writing” and just write. However, there is one aspect of “writer’s block” that is quite useful. If I can’t move on from something, or something is snagging, it is my subconscious alerting me to a flaw in the story-telling. It’s a great red flag. Drill down, find the flaw, find a solution and suddenly you’re all systems go.