We are thrilled to welcome the acclaimed author of “Maggie & Me”, Damian Barr here to Hatchards on the publication day of his brilliant new novel
The Two Roberts
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.
As we will discover this evening, "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 itself, and who paid a devastating price.
Join us if you can for what promisesto be a fascinating evening!
Reviews:
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
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
Vivid and alive. A truly great story penned by one of Scotland's finest writers - JENNI FAGAN
