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Hindustan Times
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Andrew O'Hagan on the Dickensian dark web of modern London
For months I resisted reading Caledonian Road. Never mind the rave reviews, the prizes it was picking up, and that it was plastered over the window displays of all of London's Waterstones bookstores as Book of the Month. Because did I really want to spend 600 pages reading about the angst of a middle-aged intellectual white man? Despite this, something beckoned— here was a social novel in the tradition of Dickens that looked at the murky money connections between Russian oligarchs and the British aristocracy. Set in London, it dug deep into politics, immigration, street crime and the dark web. With the very human story of Campbell, an art critic, a self-made intellectual who rises from the ranks and then inevitably starts to fall. And so I began, and in doing so, was drawn in deeply. I met author Andrew O'Hagan soon after, at this year's Jaipur Literary Festival. A slender Scotsman with a melancholy resting face and a wry sense of humour, Andrew spoke to me about why the social novel matters. We met more recently, this time on Zoom. On a recent Friday afternoon Andrew is hunkered down in his Scottish seaside writing den, surrounded by the detective-like charts that fuel his Dickensian cast of 60. Here are edited excerpts of our conversations. Caledonian Road The youngest of four boys, you grew up a feminist? I was the only feminist in my family, including my mother. My father was a tough man who lived according to old-fashioned, very macho rules—you just earned the money and drank a lot, and the boys were supposed to be tough and the girls were supposed to be sort of servants. My mother was a cleaner. She cleaned schools, she cleaned chip shops, and then she would come in and do all this work at home for free. And all these men just expected to have their mother running around, producing bread and soup and, I mean, it was amazing, and it was amazingly objected to by me. But my mother would say, I enjoy doing this, and this is my life. Over the years she seemed to enjoy it less, and became much more feminist afterwards. But, yeah, I wanted to get that energy into the book, because that was what I grew up with. Not just in our house, but in all the houses in our housing estate in our town, women were slightly subjugated by men, and the stories about how they achieved a revolution in their own lives are still arriving in novels and plays and poems today. Your father was a strict man? He was a very strict man. He was an addict, an alcoholic, a violent person—a social problem that was almost commonplace in the world I grew up in. Often, the people suffering in those circumstances are not only the addicts, but their partners and their children, and this is part of the social fabric that I've always tried to write about—as generations grow up in difficult circumstances and then try to use their experience and their imagination to look at the exploitation and disadvantages of other people. That is a Dickensian impulse, almost. Dickens grew up poor, working in a blacking factory, abandoned by a father who'd been in prison for debt. And what did he do when he grew up? He wrote about children living in families who were in debt. It doesn't happen to every writer, but it can happen, and it happened in my case. You've spoken earlier of how reading as a child helped you make sense of the world? My life was saved by reading. I don't know what would have happened otherwise. I was feeling around in the dark for a long time as a kid, and then suddenly my eyes began to open, and I was blinded by the light, and I've been blinded by the light ever since. The opportunity to read those wonderful stories—that's the great thing about literature. It's not just that they turn a light on so that you can see how brilliant other people are. They turn a light on in you and allow you to fully live. They replenish the imagination every day. Good books are as essential as protein in any well-lived life. And I would shout that from the top of any building. A person who doesn't read is at a distinct disadvantage in their life. That may sound like a harsh thing to say, because some people may be so distracted or preoccupied, or they can't get to books, and I feel sorry for those people the same way I would feel sorry for any malnourished person. And I do put it in those terms. It's not a moral decision to read a book. It's a practical decision, very often. Can you get to a library? Can you buy a book? Do you have a friend who you can talk to about what you've read? Where did you get your books from? It was quite a lonely journey being a solo reader in a house without books. But I had friends in the library. That is to say, the librarians—all women, all brilliant—doing what was called interlibrary loans. They would order books for you from other libraries that they didn't have. And they changed my life, these women. They spotted kids from houses where there were no books, where there were social problems or maybe alcohol abuse, and they said, 'We're going to create opportunity for you and distance and freedom.' I read Robert Louis Stevenson and Charles Dickens and all the children's books like The Little Prince and The Secret Garden—all those classic children's books which were really about how to live and how to use your imagination. And then you moved to London, joined the London Review of Books at 21, worked as a reporter and have written ten novels. Tell us about your 10th novel that took you ten years to write—how did Caledonian Road happen? As a reporter, I'd been working in crime, cryptocurrency, in fake identities and online personalities. Those stories gave me a wealth of curiosity about the modern world. And then two things came together in my head—the Victorian model of the social novel and this very non-Victorian subject matter. I realized that I could have a Dickensian novel about very non-Dickensian things, but where the same human problems would emerge—the gulf between rich and poor, between men and women, between truth and lies, between exploitation and decency. All these oppositions that existed 200 years ago still exist, but they express themselves through new technologies and new forms. This happened ten years ago and I thought, bloody hell, if I'm ever going to do the big social novel, I need to do it now. That meant looking at some of the great schisms and separations that exist in modern life and getting them into one book. So the one-word answer to your question is: ambition. I was in my forties, I suddenly realized that I had enough ambition and had enough energy. I knew it would take maybe 10 years, because 60 characters based on real social phenomena in one book—you don't pluck them from the air. Writing this novel for you meant years more of research into these disparate worlds of haves and have-nots—was it hard to move from one to the other? I wanted my novel to have the comedy and the sadness of modern London—all the corruption and all the colorfulness of a modern city in the age of the internet. So the research was crazy—craziest research of my life. But if you're working in the Charles Dickens tradition, you're trying to reinvent reality from the inside, and that means you have to go inside and get to know the thing that you're trying to depict. Sometimes, one part of my day was going to Windsor Castle to have lunch with the Queen and the aristocracy and Russian oligarchs. And then another part would be hanging out with young street guys and going to court when they've been accused of knife crime. And the world of DJs and fashion and film. I did find it easy to move from one world to another. I think I was born an adaptive—I'm one of those shapeshifters. I've been like that in my own life, and I've been like that as a writer. The two things are very close instincts for me. And you researched the world of sweatshops and of immigrants dying—was that hard? It was almost overwhelming doing some of that research. When you write a novel, you're dealing in invented characters—you can control the story. But these people are real. The forces that are operating on them aren't controlled by me. And I would get overwhelmed by a sense that I was about to leave them there, walking away with a very thick notepad. And of course, I'd done that with their understanding and with their permission, but nonetheless, I was leaving them behind. They were people whose lives I could neither control nor in any straightforward way improve. And that's a kind of agony. You also spent months on the dark web—was that scary? Horrendous. The dark web is a sort of bazaar of the dangerous, the despicable, the narcotic, the violent. The things that can't appear in public will appear on the dark net. It's a dehumanized place, but I had to get to know it as a novelist for this book. So yes, I was conscious of it as being dangerous, conscious of going in too far, but because it was going to lead to a place where (my protagonist) Campbell would lose himself in the dark web, I had to lose myself slightly in the dark net to be able to tell this story. Caledonian Road has an amazing audiobook version as well. Michael Abubakar (the narrator) is brilliant. He's at the Globe at the moment, in a Chekhov play, and he's got a big career ahead of him. He is only in his twenties, and he takes this 700-page novel—with dukes, duchesses, Russian oligarchs and their children, Scottish people and Polish people—and he comes up with a voice for all of them! So what next? I have a non-fiction book coming out this October on friendship. I have a novel set in Glasgow on the cards. For another future novel, I'm working closely with AI scientists. If our children are speaking privately to machines all day—and yes, they are—what will the effect be on society, on human community? These are huge questions. So novelists must begin to understand things better, to imagine scenarios, tell stories in which these problems are addressed. … I come away from these conversations convinced novels still matter. From Russian oligarchs to AI ethics, a social novel like Caledonian Road, with its conflicts and comedies and cast of city characters, has the power to change the consciousness of our times. For that alone it is worth reading. What other social novels in this tradition that you would recommend? (Sonya Dutta Choudhury is a Mumbai-based journalist and the founder of Sonya's Book Box, a bespoke book service. Each week, she brings you specially curated books to give you an immersive understanding of people and places. If you have any reading recommendations or reading dilemmas, write to her at sonyasbookbox@ The views expressed are personal)
Hindustan Times
13-06-2025
- Politics
- Hindustan Times
Andrew O'Hagan: 'Liberal white men have had a difficult decade'
How did you conceive the idea of writing Caledonian Road? Also, tell us about its wide cast of characters. I had been thinking about this book for a long time. I lived in Kings Cross in the 1990s when I was in my twenties and I was always overwhelmed by London as a place: a multiplicity of human beings from all over the world, their varied economic statuses, life experiences, and this multifarious, multicultural road, Caledonian Road stretching up through North London, that really interested me. I realised if I could tell the story of the people who lived around that road, then I'd have a new kind of novel about London. And that it would have a relationship with the Dickensian novel, the Victorian novel. So, it's a big social novel that I tried to put onto the page: the rich, the poor, the domestic, and the foreign men, women, and children from different backgrounds. That's what I wanted in this book. It took me 10 years to research and write it. At the beginning of the novel, there's this sentence, 'Oh, the progress of guilt and vanity in the average white liberal today.' Were you trying to capture the anxieties of a male artist in post-Brexit UK? I think that liberal white men in Western society have had a very difficult decade. And I speak as one, by the way; I speak autobiographically. I am a middle-aged, middle-class, white, liberal man. And we've had a difficult 10 years because we've been challenged on everything that we used to think was religious. You know, we thought we were on the right side of history. We thought we were arguing for equality and decency. We thought we were on the side of the underdog. But, as it turns out, we have been part of the problem all along. Perhaps we have made a lot of noise about equality, but have we actually contributed much to it? Have we given up any of our privileges? Have we distributed our wealth? No, right? The white liberal in Western society is not the enemy of this book, but he's equally responsible for the complexity of the situation. We're in the newspapers that think of themselves as being on the right side of history: the ones who get everything right and those who are anti-racist ,are pro-women, pro-abortion and anti-Trump. They don't ever find themselves in the wrong. Well, this novel doesn't take that for granted but it questions these very people. It certainly questions the people on the right wing, but it also thinks: why not question the people on the left side? Because society is in a mess and it's not all just down to one faction? Intolerance and virtue signalling have been a huge problem on the left as well as on the right, so I was thinking of that too with this book. The principal character, Campbell, doesn't take himself too seriously, but there's a distinct way he looks at himself. In telling the story of Campbell, there is an attempt to show an artist's own journey of creating myths about himself. How does he situate himself in the order of things? As creative beings, we have the capacity to invent ourselves. That's a human capacity. That's been there all along. It's the foundational truth of fiction, of literature, of movies, of songs, of storytelling of every kind. This is standard creative behaviour, and we don't do that only when we're writing books, we do it while we are living life. If you were hysterical, you might say that means that we're all liars. And, I don't think that's true that we're all liars. I think we're all creative, and I think we tell the story of ourselves that best suits us at different times in our lives. We're creative with the truth. We're economical with the truth. We are adventurous with the notions of what we might be rather than who we are. And this is healthy. This is what children do, too. It's what creative people do. It's what adults do throughout their lives. We must use our imaginations to fully live, I feel. The book uses irony and satire to shine a light on British mannerisms. There is a pitting of nostalgia for a bygone world with a newer way of living. Campbell uses a mindfulness app, and also apps to calm himself down. Was this deliberate? How cautiously did you tread writing between these two worlds? It was very deliberate. This was a comedy and a tragedy together from the beginning when I first conceived of this book. I knew it would hopefully be a funny book that also told truths, difficult truths, and maybe even tragic truths about the way we live now. But comedy was always part of the vehicle. It was always one of the wheels of a four-wheel tuk-tuk, making its way towards the future of this book. I wanted to have a sense that we weave together all the strands of our lives regarding what is true and what we wish to be true. Campbell Flynn, my central character, is, if you like, suspended between the old and the new ways of living. He is detained by the notions of the past. He is upset to think of his childhood and his parents, and he's trying to survive the past. As we all are. But at the same time, he [has] grasped social media, mindfulness apps … he even writes a self-help book about his condition, Why Men Weep in their Cars, hoping that it applies to other men, too. But he does that to also make him some money. You know, this is a comic situation in the sense that a traditional man should be fighting for his life, fighting for his freedom of mind, and that's really the comedy at the centre of the book. One is made to think: Is this man slightly delusional and yet brilliant? And I think these two things can go together. Look at some of our politicians: they're brilliant people, but they're fully delusional, too. That intelligence has not prevented them from being fools and also from fooling themselves and trying to fool the public intelligence: that's something we can take into account. Intelligence is no guarantee of living a decent life and slowly Campbell Flynn comes to know about this in the book. In his review, Xan Brooks called this book a 'state of the nation social novel'. Where do you see your novel in terms of the spectrum of London-centric books that you may have enjoyed reading? I loved Bleak House, Dickens's great book. I also loved Our Mutual Friend, another great book by Charles Dickens. I loved the American writer Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities. All these must have influenced me. Particularly, Wolfe because he worked as a reporter and as a fiction writer. He used a lot of research in his big novel about New York. In the 1980s, he told several difficult truths about life in New York during that period, and I think that must have influenced me to some extent but for me, I'll be happy if Caledonian Road takes a modest place next to the books that have been written about London over the last few hundred years, which have tried to capture the moment. Because this isn't a book about an unchanged city. This is a new London. Dickens would not recognise the London that I have tried to capture in this book of social realism. It wouldn't be socially real to him: the social media's impact, the Internet's impact, the impact of cryptocurrency, and all the modes of communication… ways of being, ways of being self-conscious, mindful and all sorts of different ways of organising and understanding your life that have defined London in the 21st century. There hadn't been a novel yet before Caledonian Road, so if it really captures all these energies of the new London in a modest way, I'd be very happy. Campbell, with his self-help book, is also trying to suggest how difficult it is for artists to support themselves financially. What he wants to do doesn't always benefit him commercially. Then, we have his literary agent who keeps reminding him of the value of his creative output, the material value which, in his view, is completely divorced from the way Campbell pursues his projects creatively. Are you commenting on the duality of being an artist in the contemporary world? The relationship between creativity and commerce has been there since the beginning of art, but it's very much a contemporary issue, the way it has been even in the Renaissance and throughout the history of publishing. Is it possible to keep the focus on creative excellence while writing a great book or must you make compromises to make it appealing to the mass market and make it commercially viable? I have to say I've never considered that question for real when I'm working on a book. If it happens, then it's great; like it has been with Caledonian Road. It has been on several best seller lists for weeks. And, you know, I think it's very healthy. That's golden for me. That's wonderful also because I did not compromise in the writing of this book to make it commercially successful. It just so happened that the story I had to tell and the way that I told it connected with people. There was a hunger out there for a big multidimensional, multicultural book about modern London as it exists right now and Caledonian Road slipped into that need, that hunger. But I had to do no second-guessing of the audience either. Maybe my instincts have become more directed towards a bigger audience as I get older, but I wasn't consciously thinking about it. Maybe I simply know my readership now. I certainly believed that there was an audience out there that would respond to this book. But it didn't affect the way I wrote the book: the book was always going to be this way. Saurabh Sharma is a Delhi-based writer and freelance journalist. They can be found on Instagram/X: @writerly_life.
ABC News
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Riding for a fall — when success, a big house and a loving family aren't enough
Andrew O'Hagan is the author of several highly acclaimed novels. His most recent book is a sweeping portrait of modern-day London, a city 'levitating on a sea of dirty Russian money'. The main character, Campbell Flynn, is much like Andrew himself: a public intellectual who escaped from the Scottish council estate he grew up in and came to London to enjoy great success. But success, a big house, a loving family and expensive habits are not enough. Campbell is a man riding for a fall, and there will be many spectators at the final hurrah, when his life comes tumbling down. Further information First Broadcast May 2024. This episode of Conversations was recorded at the Melbourne Writers Festival, 2024. Caledonian Road is published by Allen & Unwin. Find out more about the Conversations Live National Tour on the ABC website.
Daily Mail
01-06-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Can YOU guess what links this waitress to the Royal family? Woman working in London restaurant with society links to Princess Margaret
As she scurries about carrying plates and clearing tables, dressed simply in a shirt, tie and waistcoat with a starched apron tied around her waist, you'd never believe that this busy waitress has Royal connections. To her partner - and co-owner of their restaurant The Yellow Bittern - she's simply Frances, but to those familiar with the offshoots of the Windsor family tree, she's Lady Frances von Hofmannsthal. Lady Frances née Armstrong-Jones is the youngest daughter of Lord Snowdon, the former husband of Princess Margaret, and Lucy Hogg, the woman he wed shortly after finalising his divorce. Frances was born seven months later. Photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones was given the peerage of Lord Snowdon in 1961, a year after marrying the late Queen's younger sister. The couple went on to welcome two children, David, 63, and Lady Sarah Chatto, 61, the only maternal cousins of King Charles and his three siblings. But only three-and-a-half miles away from Buckingham Palace, on the somewhat grimy Caledonian Road behind King's Cross, you'll find their half-sibling hard at work at one of London 's most controversial eateries. Opened in October 2024 by the 45-year-old with her partner, chef Hugh Corcoran, 35, and bookseller Oisín Davies, 33, The Yellow Bittern has managed to divide London's restaurant critics. With just 18 seats, you can only book in for one of the two Monday to Friday lunchtime sittings by telephone or postcard, and don't even try to settle the bill with your phone, it's a strictly cash only establishment. There is no menu. Just a chalkboard with a short list of dishes that is changed daily. On one day this week there were some interesting cuisine on offer. To start: radishes with butter; crab mayonnaise; artichokes a la barigoule [that's small artichokes braised in a light stock with carrots, onion and hidden mushrooms]; mussels in cream, white wine and spring onion; and chicken and broad bean vol-au-vent. Prices range between £9 and £18. Bread and butter costs £6. And for main course: roast chicken; beef stew and mash; and Dublin Coddle [this is the Yellow Bittern's trademark dish. It looks like an artisan sausage drowning in a bowl surrounded by onions, carrots, potatoes and herbs]. These cost £25 or £28. Deserts include classics crème brulee and chocolate soufflé but also rhubarb and apple tart and strawberries in red wine, priced at £9 or £10. And then there's the now infamous Irish cheeses at £16 a plate. Need something to wash it down with? The wine list is stored in Corcoran's head, and after becoming somewhat of an expert during a tenure in Paris, he'll tell you what you'll be having from his 'coveted' wine list. And that's £10 a glass or £60-£65 a bottle. Meanwhile across the Caledonian Road tattooed men clutching hard-hats are downing pints of cold lager as enjoy their lunch-hour. Around the corner one man is comatose under a blanket, while another pleads incoherently for money as the sits by the door of a Sainsbury local shop. Two streets away two men are sitting against a wall surrounded by a cloud of bitter smelling smoke. Their eyes are both glazed and wide-open at the same time. At first glance, you could be forgiven for thinking Frances and Hugh's romance is a classic example of 'opposites attract'. She grew up in the heart of British high society - official photos from her older half-sister Lady Sarah Chatto's wedding show her sharing bridesmaid duties with Zara Phillips and posing next to the Queen Mother, Princes Charles and Edward - and he is a Belfast-born Irish republican who dreams of cooking for the RMT trade unionists who have an office round the corner from their tiny restaurant. But while their backgrounds differ, their approach to enjoying life - and their reverence for a leisurely midday meal - is remarkably similar. Inspired by the joy of a long, boozy lunch, in 2017 Frances founded food and lifestyle magazine Luncheon, a highly regarded periodical which presents its readers with a smorgasbord of high culture, food, and interesting conversation. There are definitely parallels to be drawn between what she publishes and the vibe of the famous parties thrown by her father and his first wife in Kensington Palace's Apartment 1A from the start of their relationship until their divorce in 1978. Chain-smoking Princess Margaret was renowned for holding court with some of the era's most fashionable and sharp-tongued names, as well as many of her husband's flamboyant friends from the arts. However, Frances' tastes seem to be decidedly more lowkey. She told Vogue Italia that Gavin and Stacey star James Corden would be one of her 'ideal guests' at her perfect lunch. She added that she sees Luncheon, which is now based in the same building as The Yellow Bittern, as 'a cocktail of images, photographs, designs and illustrations. And lots of conversations between, maybe, a ninety-year-old artist and a twenty-year-old photographer. Beauty is born out of this type of mix. We like the idea of creating something unique, of looking at, reading, rereading and preserving. 'It's all very random, the ideas are born spontaneously at a party, at an exhibition, or with someone I meet by chance. I want the spirit of the magazine to remain free, just like what happens during a lunch; you never know who is seated next to you and what you'll talk about.' This week Lady Frances floated between the handful of tables at this intimate eatery while her firebrand Irish chef partner Hugh picked up casserole lids to stir the pot. At one table an aging theatre director was waxing lyrical about his latest project to his lunchtime companion, an aging actor. Opposite, two young men with foppish hair in their late teens wearing Levi jeans, baggy t-shirts and expensive trainers chatter away. Next to them, a man in his late 20's and his together-forever girlfriend nuzzled each other between sips of chilled white wine, that Hugh has just poured them. Lady Frances even offered a sigh of sympathy to another diner, as he announced that his lunch guest 'cannot make it'. Lord Snowdon's zest for life and learning about people didn't fade away once he had left the confines of the Palace. Growing up, Frances recalls being invited into her father's home photography studio to meet the subject of the day - it might have been Margaret Thatcher or Tom Cruise - and joining them for a chat. She told Vogue Italia: 'I grew up in the house where my father had his studio (I'd come home from school and if the red light was on above the door I had to be absolutely silent). Every time he'd finish shooting, he'd call me in to meet his subject. They would all sit at the kitchen table, my father, the assistants, collaborators and that day's actor or actress.' With her lifelong involvement in his work, it was fitting that Lord Snowdon, who passed away aged 86 in 2017 from kidney failure, entrusted Frances to help him manage his archive and exhibitions, and gave her a key position at the Snowdon Trust. The year prior to his death, Frances launched her eponymous fashion label, selling smock coats at trendy Dover Street Market which had linings inspired by the wallpaper in her father's studio. She told ES Magazine that she had become a designer with zero formal training, admitting 'no nine to five, no degree, nothing. I just have a background of... life, I suppose.' During the 1990s, three hundred miles away in the decidedly less stellar setting of North Belfast, Corcoran was also learning about what makes for the perfect get together. He told The Irish Independent: 'As a young child, I remember coming down to a tablecloth littered with glasses from the night before; the link between food and wine and having a good time was established in my mind at an early age.' His parents, Moya, a North Yorkshire born left-winger and Jack, an Irish mechanic, nurtured the young Hugh and his brother, also called Jack, on a diet of hearty home cooked meals, which were dished up with even bigger portions of Irish nationalism and talk of trade unions over the dinner table. He added: 'My mother was always a good, hearty, simple cook and a very good gardener; she still grows vegetables and flowers. She is my primary inspiration, her food was always about nourishment. Her attitude to hospitality was that everyone was welcome to stay and eat and drink at the table. 'My father was an adventurous cook. I remember him making squid ink pasta and conger eel in red wine; we had Elizabeth David's books in the house and he was interested in those.' Described widely by the restaurant press as a 'Communist', Corcoran has done little to quash the narrative. Back at the little restaurant, Lady Frances appears to be very much at home. She smiles as she places white plates packed with haut-cuisine on to the white tablecloth, next to the cream real-linen napkins. No glass goes completely dry before she is standing next to one of the four tables, asking gently; 'Would you like anything else?' As the first sitting comes to an end Lady Frances, Hugh Corcoran and his assistant gather at the little kitchen at the end of the small room, where their gastronomic achievements wait to be served at the second sitting. This tiny one-room, no menu restaurant, may not be a banqueting hall, but Lady Frances' charm in the dining room and Hugh's skill with the pots and pans have created a truly royal eating experience.
Daily Record
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Record
Ayrshire author shortlisted for Indie Book Awards
Kilwinning author Andrew O'Hagan has been shortlisted at the Indie Book Awards for his novel Caledonian Road. An Ayrshire author have been shortlisted for an award at the prestigious Indie Book Awards. Award-winning Kilwinning author Andrew O'Hagan has been nominated in the fiction category for his novel Caledonian Road. Organised by the Booksellers Association, the Indie Book Awards are the only awards for authors and illustrators judged by - and given on behalf of - independent bookshops. Caledonian Road is a Sunday Times best-seller which follows Campbell Flynn over the course of an "incendiary" year where his world begins to fall apart in a tale of power, privilege and the hypocrisy of the liberal elite. He faces tough competition for the award as fellow nominees include James by Percival Everett, There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak, The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry, The Glassmaker by Tracy Chevalier and Think Again by Jacqueline Wilson. The Indie Book Awards are the culmination of the year-round campaign activity of Books Are My Bag which aims to showcase and promote to consumers the vital and unique economic, cultural and community value that bookshops bring on a local and national level. Andrew is a keen supporter of independent bookshops and was "proud" to be shortlisted for the award. He said: 'This shortlisting for Caledonian Road means the world to me, because my enthusiasm for independent bookselling is pretty boundless. 'I love the fact that the expertise and the human touch you find in independent booksellers is celebrated by the Booksellers Association and I feel proud to be one of the authors included. 'My relationship with independent shops is crucial to me; it describes a great deal of the fun and camaraderie to be enjoyed in this business. 'In my opinion, the inhabitants of British high streets with indie bookshops should celebrate their good luck on a daily basis. 'For a lot of us, it's where culture and entertainment and great conversations about books really begin and I couldn't live without those beautiful emporiums staffed by people who really care about what we write and what they sell. 'Hats off and respect due.' Emma Bradshaw, head of campaigns at the Booksellers Association, said: 'At the Booksellers Association, we are privileged to regularly witness the alchemy of authors and independent booksellers working in tandem to place the perfect books into the hands of exactly the right reader; it is a magical pairing of brilliant writers and expert curators. 'Therefore, it is always a privilege to announce the shortlist for the Indie Book Awards, where we can bring the results of this partnership to as wide an audience as possible alongside spotlighting some of the best and brightest summer reads for 2025.' Two Ayrshire bookshops are among the judges as the awards are decided by independent bookshops. Neither will be judging Caledonian Road though as Molly Murray from Seahorse Bookstore in Ardrossan and Sarah Skelton from The Book Nook in Stewarton are both judges in the children's categories.
