Join us for an evening with award winning writer, broadcaster and journalist Damian Barr as he talks about his new novel, The Two Roberts, reimagining one of the strongest and most passionate love stories of modern British art.
‘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.
Reviews
Superb – 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
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.
Tickets: £10 without book (Admits One. Ticket redeemeable against a signed copy of The Two Roberts) or £19 with book (Admits One and includes a signed copy of The Two Roberts)
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