Swindon honours fantasy author

Jasper Fforde is currently working on his fourth novel

Best-selling author Jasper Fforde is to be thanked at a mayoral reception in Swindon on Monday for putting the town on the map.

Civic leaders are delighted by the many real and surreal references to Swindon in Fforde's books.

It has been proposed that new streets in the town will be named after unusual characters from his fantasy series.

Fforde's first novel, The Eyre Affair, published in 2001, is set in a world similar to real life in Swindon but with such features as a skyrail, a dodo emporium and a croquet stadium.

Jasper Fforde has created a parallel universe where Swindon is a really exciting place to live Time Out critic

The time is 1985 but the Crimean War is still raging and Wales is a socialist republic.

Fforde, 43, who lives in Hay-on-Wye, mentions many familiar Swindon locations such as the Stratton bypass, Oxford Road, Commercial Road and the Magic Roundabout

He first came across the town in his previous career in the film industry while working nearby with John Hurt on Champions.

Fforde said: "The reason I chose it is that I like it and a lot of books are set in Oxford, London or Bristol.

Mayor's parlour

"I like the fact that it's a provincial town and there are lots of things happening in places like that."

The heroine of The Eyre Affair is a "literary detective" called Thursday Next who spots forgeries of Shakespeare's lost plays, mends holes in narrative plotlines and rescues characters kidnapped from literary masterpieces.

Two more novels in the series, also both set in Swindon, have been published in the past two years and have received worldwide attention.

A Time Out critic said: "Jasper Fforde has created a parallel universe where Swindon is a really exciting place to live."

On Monday the author will attend a public book-signing session before an afternoon reception in his honour at the mayor's parlour.