In Popular Culture
Books set in Swindon include The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, and the Thursday Next novels by Jasper Fforde. Fforde's Thursday Next novels feature an alternative-universe Swindon that includes a parodic "Seven Wonders of Swindon". Robert Goddard's Into the Blue, Out of the Sun and "Never Go Back" feature the central character of Harry Barnett from Swindon, and all three novels start in the town. Terry Jones, the former Monty Python member gave Swindon a backhanded reference in one of the short stories in his 2011 collection, "Evil Machines". The story "The Lift that Took People to Places They Didn't Want to Go" ends with the section "...But actually... the evil elevator hadn't changed at all. In fact it went on secretly taking people to places they didn't want to go. For every time the lift took the inhabitants of Swindon back down to the ground floor, they stepped out of the department store and onto the streets of Swindon, and so found themselves somewhere they didn't want to be."
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