Will Self’s writing room. A 360 degree view in 71 photos by Phil Grey.

And what if this is what it’s really like inside a writer’s head? A Being John Malkovitch joy-ride. You get inside and there’s no writer there, just this midden of marked up paper, bound and scattered, a litter of souvenirs shorn of their significance.

The skull’s interior: rows of overlapping stickies coating the walls like a yellow pelt of memory — plot points, character tics, Self-ish turns of phrase. A wall map of London, streets knotting and overlapping like the whorls on a brain, and more stickies strewn across it like blood spatter.

The mind’s furniture: an assortment of desk lamps and unshaded light bulbs like ideas about to happen; wire IN/OUT baskets with an unstable stack of A4 paper IN; a cardbard box (“Baked Beans”) beneath a desk.

A dictionary; a dictionary of slang; 20th Century Day by Day; Earthshock; Handguns ‘93; Bret Easton Ellis’s Lunar Park; a London A-Z; Incredible Bodies; The Joys of Yiddish; a bunch of press kits with the author’s name blazoned like a Self-referential echo. Baudelaire staring back thoughtfully from the floor.

Doors to somewhere; and somewhere else.

And a blinding white light flooding in from an unseen source — an unlidded eye — as the image washes out like an overloaded retina.