Overview

A BEST FICTION BOOK OF 2025 FOR THE GUARDIAN, THE OBSERVER, THE HERALD AND THE BBC 'Crackles with creative rebellion' DOUGLAS STUART 'We need love stories like these. Utterly absorbing' JACKIE KAY 'Vivid and alive. A truly great story penned by one of Scotland's finest writers' JENNI FAGAN 'A novel that brims over with generosity and warmth' OBSERVER He will stay like this forever, Robert's arm draped round him. They will be forever twenty. Scotland, 1933. Bobby MacBryde is on his way. After years grafting at Lees Boot Factory, he's off to the Glasgow School of Art, to his future. On his first day he will meet another Robert, a quiet man with loose dark curls - and never leave his side. Together they will spend every penny and every minute devouring Glasgow - its botanical gardens, the Barras market, a whole hidden city - all the while loving each other behind closed doors. With the world on the brink of war, their unrivalled talent will take them to Paris, Rome, London. They will become stars as the bombs fall, hosting wild parties with the likes of Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon and Elizabeth Smart. But the brightest stars burn fastest. Stunningly reimagined, The Two Roberts is a profoundly moving story of devotion and obsession, art and class. It is a love letter to MacBryde and Colquhoun, the almost-forgotten artists who tried to change the way the world sees - and paid a devastating price.

Full Product Details

9781805301547

Table of Contents

Reviews

Praise for Maggie and Me: Shocking and funny in equal measure, and will have you weeping with laughter and sorrow -- KATY GUEST * * Independent on Sunday * * The wonderful story of a remarkable man, Maggie & Me is heartbreaking and heartwarming. As gripping as a thriller, laugh-out-loud funny and deeply touching, this book will resonate long after you finish it. A triumph -- SJ WATSON Out of poverty, brutality and prejudice, Damian Barr builds something riveting, touching and painfully funny. His account of growing up under Thatcher's regime defines the experience of a generation. At once personal and universal, Maggie & Me is a work of stealthy genius -- MAGGIE O'FARRELL This amazing book tells the story of an appalling childhood with truth and clarity unsmudged by self-pity. It grips from beginning to end and leaves the reader elated at the fact that such experiences can be overcome and produce a man who can write a book so vivid, so unsentimentally forgiving, and so memorable -- DIANA ATHILL

A full-blown treat, historical fiction that brings to life unjustly neglected figures of queer art . . . A Scottish love story -- PATRICK GALE Extraordinary. Barr is a gifted storyteller and a miraculous scene painter, exquisitely rendering such a pivotal, awful moment in our history, but there's beauty on every page. The Two Roberts has a huge beating human heart, written in delicate, funny, exacting prose so that it feels fresh and nuanced and entirely new -- CURTIS GARNER Epic and touching, and a revelation in its rediscovery of MacBryde and Colquhoun -- DAVID NICHOLLS The Two Roberts is beautiful! Beautiful writing. So vivid and alive and human and humane and funny and important! Tracing the line from Glasgow School of Art to London, art is as vital on every page as is the love, defiance, queer elegance and intelligence of the two artists this book honours. This is a truly great story penned by one of Scotland's finest writers, about two of our most extraordinary artists -- JENNI FAGAN With skill equal to his subjects, Barr paints a portrait exquisite in its honesty and tenderness. Talent, determination, wretchedness and love amid forces greater than themselves move The Two Roberts forward through time; Robert and Bobby are framed by their devotion to each other, their life by their art. Barr has brought them to glorious life and given them their rightful place. Readers will not forget them. I loved it -- ELEANOR ANSTRUTHER You can close this book, but Bobby MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun will never leave you. Tough, lyrical, funny, political, serious. Damian Barr has pulled off a love story that grips and refuses to let go. Astonishingly deft -- JON COURTENAY GRIMWOOD A novel that brims over with generosity and warmth -- ALEX PRESTON * * Observer * * Praise for Damian Barr: Completely gripping and profoundly moving -- MAGGIE O'FARRELL Very beautiful. Only a truly wise and kind person could write such a book -- MAX PORTER There is pain on these pages and poetry too -- TAYARI JONES

Barr proves that Glasgow has many stories to tell. A funny, charming book that crackles with creative rebellion. It is a pleasure to read and there is real joy in discovering the forgotten history of these working-class antiheroes -- DOUGLAS STUART A full-blown treat, historical fiction that brings to life unjustly neglected figures of queer art . . . A Scottish love story -- PATRICK GALE The Two Roberts is the greatest and truest story of two male lovers I have ever read. A masterpiece. The celebration of these men while staring down their every relentless failing is world class. What an act of the imagination! It's wonderful, beautiful, heartbreaking, inspiring, honest, true, vital and magnificent. They live, they love, they fight, they sing, they fight naked and drunk, this is truly a literary miracle to look at these men and create them anew with such love, but such a tough, cold eye too -- RUSSELL T DAVIES Extraordinary. Barr is a gifted storyteller and a miraculous scene painter, exquisitely rendering such a pivotal, awful moment in our history, but there's beauty on every page. The Two Roberts has a huge beating human heart, written in delicate, funny, exacting prose so that it feels fresh and nuanced and entirely new -- CURTIS GARNER Epic and touching, and a revelation in its rediscovery of MacBryde and Colquhoun -- DAVID NICHOLLS The Two Roberts is beautiful! Beautiful writing. So vivid and alive and human and humane and funny and important! Tracing the line from Glasgow School of Art to London, art is as vital on every page as is the love, defiance, queer elegance and intelligence of the two artists this book honours. This is a truly great story penned by one of Scotland's finest writers, about two of our most extraordinary artists -- JENNI FAGAN A novel that brims over with generosity and warmth -- ALEX PRESTON * * Observer * * Working-class life and artistic Bohemia collide in this novel of all-consuming passion and the torture of creation. Brilliantly written, poignant and powerful. This is Damian Barr's chef-d'oeuvre -- IAN RANKIN The writing is beautiful. Barr's compassion and engagement powerful. Storytelling at its passionate best -- ESTHER FREUD The writing is full of brio and excitement as fresh as paint. The pair are attractive and charismatic, but tragic, their lives comet like, lit by shooting star brilliance, and deeply scored by shards of drunkenness, fecklessness and lack of money. Damian Barr re-imagines the love and squalor of this almost forgotten pair in this effervescent blur of fact and fiction, and illuminates the Roberts' careering passion and talent as it fizzes from Glasgow, through war-torn Europe to Soho and then Sussex, to finally land for ever in our galleries -- RAFFAELLA BARKER

Praise for Damian Barr: Completely gripping and profoundly moving -- MAGGIE O'FARRELL Very beautiful. Only a truly wise and kind person could write such a book -- MAX PORTER There is pain on these pages and poetry too -- TAYARI JONES A vitally brave and luminously compassionate book -- GARTH GREENWELL

Author Information

Damian Barr is an award-winning writer, broadcaster and journalist. His memoir Maggie & Me, won Stonewall Writer of the Year and Sunday Times Memoir of the Year. His debut novel, You Will Be Safe Here, was shortlisted for six major awards and named a Book of the Year in the Observer, Guardian and Mail. He has written columns for The Times and Sunday Times and hosted Front Row on BBC Radio 4 as well as his own series Guide Books. In 2019, Damian brought books back to television with the Big Scottish Book Club, now in its sixth series and syndicated internationally. Also on BBC TV, he presented Shelf Isolation and the landmark documentary for Sir Walter Scott's 250th. Damian holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Lancaster University and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His world-famous Literary Salon ran from 2008 to 2023, celebrating writers from around the world and widening the cultural conversation. He is a trustee of Gladstone's Library and a campaigner for libraries. He lives in Brighton. damianbarr.com | @mrdamianbarr

Tab Content 6

Countries Available