June 26, 2024
We are thrilled to have welcomed Andrew O’Hagan, the esteemed author of Mayflies and The Secret Life and a three-time nominee for the Booker Prize, to discuss his sensational new novel Caledonian Road. It follows Campbell Flynn, a professor and art historian coming off of the success of his biography of Vermeer. As Campbell becomes entangled with one of his students, he goes down a dark path that culminates in an exposing incident on London’s Caledonian Road. Named one of the Globe and Mail’s most anticipated books of 2024, the novel explores the British aristocracy, academia, and politics through this story of five interconnected families and their fortunes. Joanna Biggs, senior editor at Harper’s magazine, joined O’Hagan for a conversation on his new novel and its satirical critique of British high society.
Featured Book
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Caledonian Road
By Andrew O'Hagan
Published by W. W. Norton & Company
He’s never taken other people half as seriously as they take themselves, which is the first of his mistakes. The second is a new project: opportunistic and precisely calibrated to rake in a fortune. Riding on the high of a best-selling biography of Vermeer and fielding more inquiries and requests than he has the time or patience to pursue, Campbell has nevertheless still not managed to shake the question of money. The fact of his quiet loan from a school friend now embroiled in scandal makes the ever-present worry feel even more pressing. His unflappable agent, Atticus; his steadfast wife, Elizabeth; his sister, Moira, crusading parliamentarian for the poor; his well-adjusted, well-off adult children, Angus and Kenzie; and all the outward trappings of success can’t conceal that something in his life is off.
As Campbell becomes increasingly entangled with a brilliant student, convention-smashing and working class, like he used to be, he feels he’s been given a second chance to embrace the change that frightens him, even as he sees trouble brewing for his family and friends. Campbell’s personal quest takes him down darker roads than he could have imagined, and all his worlds—the art scene and academia, fashion and the English aristocracy, journalism and the internet—collide in spectacular fashion, culminating in one shocking night on Caledonian Road.
In Conversation
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Andrew O’Hagan
Andrew O’Hagan
Andrew O’Hagan, a Scottish novelist and essayist, is a winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction, a three-time nominee for the Booker Prize, the editor-at-large of the London Review of Books, and a contributor to the New Yorker. He lives in London.
Photo Credit: Christina Jansen
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Joanna Biggs
Joanna Biggs
Joanna Biggs is a senior editor at Harper’s magazine. A Life of One’s Own: Nine Women Writers Begin Again came out with Ecco last year and was a finalist for the National Award for Arts Writing.
Photo Credit: Hillery Stone
