Canongate acquires Damian Barr’s queer historical novel The Two Roberts

Canongate has snapped up The Two Roberts, a historical novel based on the lives of Robert MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun from the author and broadcaster Damian Barr.

Editor-at-large Ellah Wakatama acquired UK and Commonwealth rights (excluding Canada) from Clare Conville of the C&W Agency in a two-book deal, and is set to publish the novel in September 2025.

"The Two Roberts is a fictional reimagining of the lifelong love between working-class artists Robert MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun," the synopsis says. "They met as working-class students at Glasgow School of Art in 1933. They fell in love almost immediately and rarely left each other’s side–meeting great success and bitter failure but always staying committed to art and each other. They were at the heart of a social set that included Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon and Elizabeth Smart–living an out Bohemian life, whatever the consequences."

The synopsis adds: "Tender, bold and deeply personal, The Two Roberts is a timely love letter to these almost forgotten queer Scottish pioneers, exploring what it means to discover your voice as an artist, to find love when it’s forbidden and to change the way the world sees."

Barr will also curate "Robert MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun: Artists, Lovers, Outsiders", an exhibition at Charleston’s Autumn/Winter 2025 season in Lewes that will rediscover the lives and works of MacBryde and Colquhoun.

Barr said: "I fell in love with Bobby and Robert as soon as I met them. They are brave and bold and more than a bit wild. Their relationship is as dazzling and complex as their work. But they’ve been relegated to footnotes by time, class prejudice and homophobia. I’m honoured to finally make them the stars of their own story, to reimagine their lives and love."

Wakatama added: "In The Two Roberts, Damian reimagines the lives and love of two working-class boys who become great artists. There is tenderness and compassion here, a vivid portrait of time and place. This is a book about art and class, about genius and its terrible cost and about the true meaning of finding your soul’s mate."