Andrew O'Hagan

'A witty, heartfelt but intelligent celebration of what it means to have great friends.' The Times 'Delightful.' Guardian 'The overwhelming tone of the book is joy, along with an optimism about friendship's enduring essence.' Sunday Times A Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year From the bestselling author of Mayflies and Caledonian Road, a heart-enriching celebration of what makes us great: our friends. If we are lucky in our lives, our friendships will be rich and varied. They will be shared with those with two legs, with four legs, with whiskers or clean faces; they will come dressed in the simplicity of childhood or the professional attire of adult life; some will span decades, and some will be only fleeting. But the thing they will all have in common is that life is not only unimaginable - but unimagined - without them. In these gorgeous personal reflections, Andrew O'Hagan explores friendship through music and poetry, memory and history, illuminating the many ways and reasons that people come together, and how our lives are all the better because we do. Andrew O'Hagan's novel Caledonian Road was a Sunday Times bestseller w/c 31/03/2024

From the bestselling author of Mayflies and Caledonian Road, a heart-enriching celebration of what makes us great: our friends.If we are lucky, in our lives, our friendships will be rich and varied. They will be shared with those with two legs, with four legs, with whiskers or clean faces; they will come dressed in the simplicity of childhood or the professional attire of adult life; some will span decades, and some will be only fleeting. But the thing they will all have in common is that life is not only unimaginable - but unimagined - without them.In these gorgeous personal reflections, Andrew O'Hagan explores friendship through music and poetry, memory and history, illuminating the many ways and reasons that people come together, and how our lives are all the better because we do.

Campbell Flynn, art historian, professor, and f ted fixture of the literati, always knew that when his life came crashing down, it would happen in public--yet he never imagined that a single year in London would expose so much.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.

A BEST BOOK OF 2024 IN THE SUNDAY TIMES, THE SPECTATOR, TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT, INDEPENDENT, SCOTSMAN AND THE NEW YORKER'Extraordinary.' MARINA HYDE'Pitch-perfect.' OBSERVER'An utter joy to read.' MONICA ALI'Majestic.' INDEPENDENT'A masterpiece.' JOHN LANCHESTER'Addictively enjoyable.' GUARDIAN'Sensational.' IRISH INDEPENDENTA SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERSHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL FICTIONHe always knew: when his life came tumbling down, it would occur in public.Campbell Flynn is fuelled by an appetite for wealth and admiration, controversy and novelty. An art historian and celebrity pundit, he has enjoyed a charmed career rubbing shoulders with oligarchs and aristocrats, fashion designers and fine artists, at ease with the highbrow and the mainstream.Only now, the world is changing. Over the course of an incendiary year a web of secrets and crimes will be revealed, and Campbell Flynn may not be able to protect himself from the shattering exposure of all his privilege really involves.Andrew O'Hagan's novel Caledonian Road was a Sunday Times bestseller w/c 31/03/2024

Campbell Flynn, art historian, professor, and f ted fixture of the literati, always knew that when his life came crashing down, it would happen in public--yet he never imagined that a single year in London would expose so much.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.

From the author of Mayflies, an irresistible, unputdownable, state-of-the-nation novel - the story of one man's epic fall from grace.

From the author of Mayflies, an irresistible, unputdownable, state-of-the-nation novel - the story of one man's epic fall from grace.May 2021. London.Campbell Flynn - art historian and celebrity intellectual - is entering the empire of middle age. Fuelled by an appetite for admiration and the finer things, controversy and novelty, he doesn't take people half as seriously as they take themselves. Which will prove the first of his huge mistakes.The second? Milo Mangasha, his beguiling and provocative student. Milo inhabits a more precarious world, has experiences and ideas which excite his teacher. He also has a plan.Over the course of an incendiary year, a web of crimes and secrets and scandals will be revealed, and Campbell Flynn may not be able to protect himself from the shattering exposure of all his privilege really involves. But then, he always knew: when his life came tumbling down, it would occur in public.

An unforgettable coming-of-age novel that becomes a profound mediation on life, death, and lifelong friendship. Everyone has a Tully Dawson: the friend who defines your life. In the summer of 1986, in a small Scottish town, James and Tully ignite a brilliant friendship based on music, films and the rebel spirit. With school over and the locked world of their fathers before them, they rush towards the climax of their youth: a magical weekend in Manchester, the epicentre of everything that inspires them in working-class Britain. There, against the greatest soundtrack ever recorded, a vow is made: to go at life differently. Thirty years on, half a life away, the phone rings. Tully has news--news that forces the life-long friends to confront their own mortality head-on. What follows is an incredibly moving examination of the responsibilities and obligations we have to those we love. Mayflies is at once a finely-tuned drama about the delicacy and impermanence of human connection and an urgent inquiry into some of the most important questions of all: Who are we? What do we owe to our friends? And what does it mean to love another person amidst tragedy?

'A stunning novel.' GRAHAM NORTON'My god this is gorgeous. Wild, wise, wonderful.' RUSSELL T. DAVIES'Unforgettable.' CÓLM TOIBÍNWINNER OF THE CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD PRIZESHORTLISTED FOR THE PORTICO PRIZEEveryone has a Tully Dawson: the friend who defines your life.In the summer of 1986, James and Tully ignite a friendship based on music, films and the rebel spirit. With school over, they rush towards a magical weekend of youthful excess in Manchester, played out against the greatest soundtrack ever recorded. And there a vow is made: to go at life differently.Thirty years on, the phone rings. Tully has news.Readers love Mayflies: ????? 'Intelligent, moving, and quick-moving. Leaves you smiling and crying at once.'????? 'Exquisitely written and made me exhale with a big sigh and just sit still, thinking deeply, when I closed the book at the end.'????? 'An uplifting and life-affirming read.'????? 'This book will change your life and challenge your values. You'll laugh, then weep til you're weak like a baby.'????? 'An exquisite exploration of how life should be lived, right until the very last breath.'

A unique insight into the ways in which one of today's leading artists is inspired by great works of the past. In 16 emphatically modern new paintings, renowned artist, Alison Watt, responds to the remarkable delicacy of the female portraits by eighteenth-century Scottish portraitist, Allan Ramsay. Watt's new works are particularly inspired by Ramsay's much-loved portrait of his wife, along with less familiar portraits and drawings. Watt shines a light on enigmatic details in Ramsay's work and has created paintings which hover between the genres of still life and portraiture. In conversation with curator Julie Lawson, Watt discusses how painters look at paintings, explains why Ramsay inspired her, and provides unique insight into her own creative process. Andrew O'Hagan responds to Watt's paintings with a new work of short fiction and art historian Tom Normand's commentary explores further layers of depth to our understanding of both artists.

Award-winning essayist and novelist Andrew O'Hagan presents a trio of reports exploring the idea of identity on the Internet--true, false, and in between--where your virtual self takes on a life of its own outside of reality.A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year - One of Publishers Weekly's Top 10 Book of Essays and Literary Criticism - One of Chicago Reader's Books We Can't Wait to Read The Secret Life issues three bulletins from the porous border between cyberspace and IRL. "Ghosting" introduces us to the beguiling and divisive Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, whose autobiography O'Hagan agrees to ghostwrite with unforeseen--and unforgettable--consequences. "The Invention of Ronnie Pinn" finds him using the actual identity of a deceased young man to construct an entirely new one in cyberspace, leading him on a journey deep into the Web's darkest realms. And "The Satoshi Affair" chronicles the strange case of Craig Wright, the Australian Web developer who may or may not be the mysterious inventor of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto--and who may or may not be willing, or even able, to reveal the truth. These fascinating pieces take us to the weirder fringes of life in a digital world while also casting light on our shared predicaments. What does it mean when your very sense of self becomes, to borrow a term from the tech world, "disrupted"? The Secret Life shows us that it might take a novelist, an inventor of selves, armed with the tools of a trenchant reporter, to find an answer.

From the Sunday Times bestselling author of Caledonian Road and Mayflies In The Secret Life: Three True Stories, Andrew O'Hagan issues three bulletins from the porous border between cyberspace and the 'real world'.'Ghosting' introduces us to the Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, whose autobiography the author agrees to ghostwrite, with unforgettable consequences.'The Invention of Ronald Pinn' finds O'Hagan using the identity of a deceased young man to construct an entirely new one online, leading him on a journey into the deep web's darkest realms.'The Satoshi Affair' chronicles the strange case of Craig Wright, the Australian web developer who may or may not be the mysterious inventor of Bitcoin, and who may or may not be willing, or even able, to reveal the truth.

Longlisted for the Man Booker PrizeThe Illuminations, the fifth novel from Andrew O'Hagan, a writer "of astonishingly assured gifts" (The New York Times Book Review), is a work of deeply charged beauty--and one that demonstrates, with poignancy and power, that no matter how we look at it, there is no such thing as an ordinary life. Anne Quirk's life is built on stories--the lies she was told by the man she loved and the fictions she told herself to survive. Nobody remembers Anne now, but in her youth she was an artistic pioneer, a creator of groundbreaking documentary photographs. Her beloved grandson Luke, a captain with the Royal Western Fusiliers in the British army, has inherited her habit of transforming reality. When his mission in Afghanistan goes horribly wrong, he returns to Scotland, where the secrets that have shaped his family begin to emerge. He and Anne set out to confront a mystery from her past among the Blackpool Illuminations--the dazzling lights that brighten the seaside town as the season turns to winter.

** Order Andrew O'Hagan's new novel, Caledonian Road, now ** From the Sunday Times bestselling author of Mayflies and Caledonian Road How much do we keep from the people we love? Why is the truth so often buried in secrets? Can we learn from the past or must we forget it?Standing one evening at the window of her house by the sea, Anne Quirk sees a rabbit disappearing in the snow. Nobody remembers her now, but this elderly woman was in her youth a pioneer of British documentary photography. Her beloved grandson, Luke, now a captain with the Royal Western Fusiliers, is on a tour of duty in Afghanistan, part of a convoy taking equipment to the electricity plant at Kajaki. Only when Luke returns home to Scotland does Anne's secret story begin to emerge, along with his, and they set out for an old guest house in Blackpool where she once kept a room.

"A brilliant essayist, O'Hagan] constructs sentences that pierce like pinpricks." -- Publishers Weekly, starred review For more than two decades, Andrew O'Hagan has been publishing celebrated essays on both sides of the Atlantic. The Atlantic Ocean highlights the best of his clear-eyed, brilliant work, including his first published essay, a reminiscence of his working-class Scottish upbringing; an extraordinary piece about the lives of two soldiers, one English, one American, both of whom died in Iraq on May 2, 2005; and a piercing examination of the life of William Styron. O'Hagan's subjects range from the rise of the tabloids to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, from the trajectory of the Beatles to the impossibility of not fancying Marilyn Monroe. The Atlantic Ocean -- an engrossing and important collection.

In November 1960, Frank Sinatra gave Marilyn Monroe a dog. His name was Mafia Honey, or Maf for short. He had an instinct for celebrity. For politics. For psychoanalysis. For literature. For interior decoration. For Liver Treat with a side order of National Biscuits. Maf was with Marilyn for the last two years of her life, first in New York, where she mixed with everyone who was anyone--the art dealer Leo Castelli, Lee Strasberg and the Actors Studio crowd, Upper West Side migr s--then back to Los Angeles. She took him to meet President Kennedy and to Hollywood restaurants, department stores, and interviews. To Mexico, for her divorce.With style, brilliance, and panache, Andrew O'Hagan has drawn a one-of-a-kind portrait of the woman behind the icon, and the dog behind the woman.