"What if the protagonist of a novel was not a single person but a couple? Damian Barr takes on this challenge, and he's found a historic couple who make the ideal source material. Working-class Scottish artists Bobby MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun were rarely apart after they met in 1933. They lived and worked together, became famous together and then declined into desperate squalor together even poorer than when they began."
"They move into the attic of the wealthy socialist Mrs Cranston (Politics is everyone's thing, whether we like it or not, she reprimands their tutor) and live on Bobby's stews and a love that moves rapidly from seeming impossible to feeling predestined, driven by Bobby's courage in seeking out other homosexual friends and allies on the fringes of Glasgow life."
Working-class Scottish artists Bobby MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun met in 1933 and lived and worked together, rising to fame before declining into desperate squalor. They become scholarship students at the Glasgow School of Art, live in Mrs Cranston's attic, and sustain a fast-developing romantic partnership fueled by community ties on Glasgow's fringes. War separates them when Robert fights and Bobby, asthmatic, does not. They later become celebrated in bohemian London, exhibiting at the Lefevre gallery and mixing with figures like Francis Bacon and Peter Watson. The narrative examines art, affection, class mobility, and the brutal forces that can shape lives.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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