In this live episode - thanks to Waterstones and the Bookmonger Bearsden - I’m joined by the award-winning, best-selling, heart-lifting, heart-stopping, writer and broadcaster Damian Barr. We recorded this on a lovely, lively Friday night at Glasgow’s 1599 at the Royal College - you’ll hear the echo in our glorious, gilded, high-ceilinged room - thank you so much if you joined us…
Over the years, Damian’s work has included his memoir Maggie and Me, which was a Stonewall and Sunday Times book of the year - and which was adapted into a stunning National Theatre of Scotland play at the Tron Theatre, just down the road from here - while his debut novel, You Will Be Safe Here, was a book at bedtime on BBC Radio 4, and a book of the year in the Guardian and the Observer…
His latest novel, which has just been published in paperback, is the beautiful, blind-siding The Two Roberts, which explores and celebrates the extraordinary lives, and extraordinary art of two working class boys from 1930s Ayrshire who both possessed wild and vital talent, who roved around Europe and Soho, who partied with Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon, and who - before all of that, and above and beyond all that - fell in love with each other…
Our evening marked the launch event for the paperback of The Two Roberts in Scotland, and coincided with the opening of a new exhibition celebrating the work, and art, of those two men - Colquhoun and MacBryde - in a homecoming of sorts, at the Dick Institute in Kilmarnock, curated by Damian and titled Artists, Lovers, Outsiders. It runs until January, and it’s a must-see…
Damian will be back at the Institute, in conversation with Ayrshire artist, writer and fellow Two Roberts aficionado Davy Brown, on November 26th. For now though - to Glasgow on a rainy Friday night, and our paperback launch chat… come on in…
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