An Evening with Douglas Stuart (Part One)

Douglas Stuart is one of the most successful writers in Britain today. He is celebrated globally for his honest portrayals of human relationships and working-class life. In 2020 he won the Booker Prize for his debut novel Shuggie Bain, a searingly honest novel set in 1980s Glasgow about a boy named Shuggie trying to save his mother, Agnes, from alcoholism and poverty.

His second novel Young Mungo, a story of the dangerous first love of two young men, was released in 2022 and became a number one Sunday Times Bestseller.

In May 2026, Stuart joined us live in London for an evening on identity, resilience, and the themes of his new novel John of John.

In John of John, Stuart returns to the themes of class, family, masculinity, and sexuality. It is the story of John-Calum Macleod, who returns to his childhood home on the island of Harris. Out of money and with little to show for his art school education, he sinks back into his old life, caught between the two poles of his childhood: his father John, a sheep farmer, weaver, and pillar of their local Presbyterian church, and his Glaswegian grandmother Ella, who has kept a faltering peace with her son-in-law for decades.

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