Alan Hollinghurst – författare

'Call Me By Your Name meets Evelyn Waugh in a gorgeous novel about the generations-long aftershocks of a youthful tryst' — EsquireFrom the winner of the Man Booker Prize, a masterly novel that spans seven transformative decades as it plumbs the complex relationships of a remarkable family.In October 1940, the handsome young David Sparsholt arrives in Oxford. A keen athlete and oarsman, he at first seems unaware of the effect he has on others – particularly on the lonely and romantic Evert Dax, son of a celebrated novelist and destined to become a writer himself. While the Blitz rages in London, Oxford exists at a strange remove: an ephemeral, uncertain place, in which nightly blackouts conceal secret liaisons. Over the course of one momentous term, David and Evert forge an unlikely friendship that will colour their lives for decades to come . . .Alan Hollinghurst’s sweeping novel evokes the intimate relationships of a group of friends bound together by art, literature and love across three generations. It explores the social and sexual revolutions of the most pivotal years of the past century, whose life-changing consequences are still being played out to this day. Richly observed, disarmingly witty and emotionally charged, The Sparsholt Affair is an unmissable achievement from one of our finest writers.Part of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the best of modern literature.'Startling, radical, embedded in tradition but entirely new' - Guardian'A master storyteller' - John Banville

One of the Guardian 100 Best Novels of All Time.One of the New York Times 100 Best Books of the 21st Century.Winner of the Booker Prize, The Line of Beauty is a classic novel about class, politics and sexuality in Margaret Thatcher’s 1980s Britain.In the summer of 1983, twenty-year-old Nick Guest moves into an attic room in the Notting Hill home of the wealthy Feddens: Gerald, an ambitious Tory MP, his wife Rachel and their children Toby and Catherine.Innocent of politics and money, Nick is swept up into the Feddens’ world and an era of endless possibility, all the while pursuing his own private obsession with beauty.The Line of Beauty is Alan Hollinghurst’s Man Booker Prize-winning masterpiece. It is a novel that defines a decade, exploring a young man’s collision with his own desires, and with a world he can never truly belong to.Part of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the best of modern literature.

Discover this ‘sparkling celebration of sexual intrigue’ (Telegraph) from the Booker Prize-winning author of The Line of Beauty.The Spell is a comedy of sexual manners that follows the interlocking affairs of four men: Robin, an architect in his late forties, who is trying to build an idyllic life in Dorset with his younger lover, Justin; Robin's 22 year old son Danny, a volatile beauty who lives for clubbing and casual sex; and the shy Alex, who is Justin's ex-boyfriend. As each in turn falls under the spell of romance or drugs, country living or rough trade, a richly ironic picture emerges of the clashing imperatives of modern gay life. At once lyrical, sceptical and romantic, The Spell confirms Alan Hollinghurst as one of Britain's most important novelists.

'An extraordinary book which takes the reader into a world of obsession and mystery...The Folding Star is lit by insight and humour' Evening StandardEdward Manners - thirty three and disaffected - escapes to a Flemish city in search of a new life. Almost at once he falls in love with seventeen-year-old Luc, and is introduced to the twilight world of the 1890s Belgian painter Edgard Orst.‘A generous pinch of true wit’ Sunday Times

In this series, a contemporary poet selects and introduces a poet of the past. By their selection of verses and by the personal and critical reactions they express in their introductions, the selectors offer a passionate and accessible introduction to some of the greatest poets in history.A. E. Housman (1859-1936) was born in Fockbury, Worcestershire, and educated at St John's College, Oxford. His first collection, A Shropshire Lad, was published in 1896.

The critical event in Berenice, the death of Titus's father, the Emperor Vespasian, happens a week before the play opens. Thereafter Titus knows that his separation from Berenice is inevitable. The breaking off of a great love affair involves too the hopes of Antiochus, himself long in love with Berenice. The play pushes all three of its principals to the brink, not of revenge but of self-murder, before in her sublime last speech Berenice redeems and directs them all in an act of collective abnegation.Many tears are shed, but not a drop of blood. The effect is unconventional, and profound: the pained acceptance of the irreconcilable in human affairs, and the surrender, by each of the main characters, of the person they most love.Bajazet is Racine's most violent drama; it ends, like Phèdre, with a female character's on-stage suicide, here the culmination of a vividly described sequence of off-stage murders. The setting, in a claustrophobic space within the harem at Constantinople, menaced from both without and within, seems to license a violence of emotion as well as of deed.Violent too are the repeated reversals of fortune, and the terrifying acceleration of the play towards its inexorable catastrophe.Alan Hollinghurst's translation of Berenice premiered at the Donmar Warehouse, London, in October 2012 and Bajazet, at the Almeida Theatre, London, in November 1990.

A crucial year in the Britten/Auden relationship, which reshaped and redefined artistic direction in the immediate pre-war period.Benjamin Britten and W.H. Auden were key figures of the 1930s, and here Donald Mitchell traces their lives during one crucial year, 1936. They worked hard to establish themselves, first through the GPO film unit, in a collaboration which flowered and spilled over into the theatre, and then radio - a new medium that the liveliest creative minds of the time were exploring and exploiting.Britten and Auden also joined forces in works destined for the recital room and concert hall, among them Our Hunting Fathers, the political symbolism of which Donald Mitchell examines in depth, and On the Island, settings of early Auden that comprised Britten's first important set of songs to English texts. Much use is made of Britten's private diaries, which he kept on a daily basis, and a revealing portrait emerges of the two men's relationship, of their work together in many different fields, and of the reflection within that work of political ideas current at the time.DONALD MITCHELL was Britten's close friend and publisher from 1964 until the end of the composer's life, and his authorised biographer. The T S Eliot Memorial Lectures delivered in 1979

Sunday Times Novel of the YearLonglisted for the Man Booker PrizeA magnificent, century-spanning saga about a love triangle that spawns a myth, and a family mystery, across generations.In the late summer of 1913, George Sawle brings his Cambridge friend Cecil Valance, a charismatic young poet, to visit his family home. The weekend will be one of excitements and confusions for everyone, but it is on George’s sixteen-year-old sister Daphne that it will have the most lasting impact. As the decades pass, Daphne and those around her endure startling changes in fortune and circumstance, and as reputations rise and fall, the events of that long-ago summer become part of a legendary story.The Stranger’s Child is Hollinghurst’s masterly exploration of English culture, taste and attitudes. Epic in sweep, it intimately portrays a luminous but changing world and the ways memory – and myth – can be built and broken. It is a powerful and utterly absorbing modern classic.Part of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the best of modern literature.Pre-order the new novel from Alan Hollinghurst, Our Evenings, now.

'The best novel that’s been written about contemporary Britain in the past ten years. It’s funny but desperately moving too' – The Sunday TimesAlan Hollinghurst, the Booker Prize-winning author of The Line of Beauty, brings us a dark, luminous and wickedly funny portrait of modern England through the lens of one man’s acutely observed and often unnerving experience. It is a story of race and class, theatre and sexuality, love and the cruel shock of violence, from one of the finest writers of our age.Dave Win is thirteen years old when he first goes to stay with the sponsors of his scholarship at a local boarding school. This weekend, with its games and challenges and surprising encounters, will open up heady new possibilities, even as it exposes him to their son Giles’ envy and violence.As their lives unfold over the next half a century, the two boys’ careers will diverge dramatically: Dave, a gifted actor struggling with convention and discrimination, Giles an increasingly powerful and dangerous politician.Our Evenings is Dave Win’s own account of his life as a schoolboy and student, his first love affairs, in London, and on the road with an experimental theatre company, and of a late-life affair, which transforms his sixties with a new sense of happiness and a perilous security.

I can’t explain it. I can’t explain any of it to you. The line of beauty which led me to him… to here.London. Summer, 1983.Nick Guest moves into the grand Notting Hill home of his university friend Toby — and into the dazzling world of Toby’s father Gerald, a newly elected Tory MP, his elegant wife Rachel, and their troubled daughter Cat. From private gardens to country estates, glittering parties to political dinners, Nick is swept up in a world of money, power and privilege. A world that promises everything — and exacts a cost.As he pursues beauty in all its forms, Nick finds himself caught between the freedoms of desire and the rigid boundaries of class, sexuality and public image in a rapidly changing Britain.Olivier Award nominee Jack Holden’s (Cruise; Kenrex) new adaptation of The Line of Beauty is a captivating portrait of Thatcher’s Britain at its most decadent and divisive, based on the Booker Prize-winning novel by Alan Hollinghurst.This edition was published to coincide with the world premiere production at the Almeida Theatre in October 2025.

A ‘Book of the Year’ for The Guardian, The Observer, The Times, Daily Express, The Spectator, The Financial Times, Daily Telegraph, New Statesman and the I'I must confess my devotion immediately: I read every word this man writes. I wait for every new novel and the wait has been worth it: this is gorgeous. I simply love the way this man writes' – Russell T. Davies, writer and creator of It's A Sin'The best novel that’s been written about contemporary Britain in the past ten years. It’s funny but desperately moving too' – The Sunday TimesFeatured on Radio 4's 'Book at Bedtime'Alan Hollinghurst, the Booker Prize-winning author of The Line of Beauty, brings us a dark, luminous and wickedly funny portrait of modern England through the lens of one man’s acutely observed and often unnerving experience. It is a story of race and class, theatre and sexuality, love and the cruel shock of violence, from one of the finest writers of our age.Dave Win is thirteen years old when he first goes to stay with the sponsors of his scholarship at a local boarding school. This weekend, with its games and challenges and surprising encounters, will open up heady new possibilities, even as it exposes him to their son Giles’ envy and violence.As their lives unfold over the next half a century, the two boys’ careers will diverge dramatically: Dave, a gifted actor struggling with convention and discrimination, Giles an increasingly powerful and dangerous politician.Our Evenings is the intimate and touching story of Dave Win’s life as a schoolboy and student, his first love affairs, in London, and on the road with an experimental theatre company, and of a late-life affair, which transforms his sixties with a new sense of happiness and a perilous security.Our Evenings entered the Sunday Times Fiction Hardback chart at #9 w/b 07-10-24.

'I must confess my devotion immediately: I read every word this man writes. I wait for every new novel and the wait has been worth it: this is gorgeous. I simply love the way this man writes' – Russell T. DaviesAlan Hollinghurst, the Booker Prize-winning author of The Line of Beauty, brings us a dark, heartbreaking but wickedly funny portrait of England spanning six decades. It is a story of race and class, theatre and sexuality, love and the cruel shock of violence, from one of the finest writers of our age.Dave Win is thirteen years old when he first goes to stay with the sponsors of his scholarship at a local boarding school. This weekend, with its games and challenges and surprising encounters, will open up heady new possibilities, even as it exposes him to their son Giles’ envy and violence.As their lives unfold over the next half a century, the two boys’ careers will diverge dramatically: Dave, a gifted actor struggling against convention and discrimination, Giles an increasingly powerful and dangerous politician.Our Evenings is the intimate and touching story of Dave Win’s life as a schoolboy and student, his first love affairs, in London, and on the road with an experimental theatre company. Then, a late-life affair, which transforms his sixties with a new sense of happiness and a perilous security.'The best novel that’s been written about contemporary Britain in the past ten years. It’s funny but desperately moving too' – The Sunday TimesOur Evenings entered the Sunday Times Fiction Hardback chart at #9 w/b 07-10-24.

Young, gay, William Beckwith spends his time, and his trust fund, idly cruising London for erotic encounters. When he saves the life of an elderly man in a public convenience an unlikely job opportunity presents itself - the man, Lord Nantwich, is seeking a biographer. Will agrees to take a look at Nantwich’s diaries. But in the story he unravels, a tragedy of twentieth-century gay repression, lurk bitter truths about Will’s own privileged existence.

An essay by Xavier F. Salomon paired with a contribution by award-winning novelist Alan Hollinghurst bring to life Jean-Honore Fragonard's (1732-1806) Progress of Love, a series of fourteen paintings considered by many to be the artist's masterpiece. The first four paintings were commissioned in 1771 for the comtesse du Barry, to be installed in 1772 in Louveciennes, the pavilion outside Paris built for her by her lover, Louis XV. By 1773 the canvases, The Pursuit, The Meeting, The Lover Crowned and Love Letters, had been rejected by Du Barry and returned to the artist. In 1790 Fragonard moved the canvases to his cousin's house, the Villa Maubert, in Grasse, and over the course of the year painted ten additional panels: two large-scale works, Love Triumphant and Reverie; four narrow "strips" depicting hollyhocks, and four overdoors of putti. Sold by the Maubert estate to the dealer Agnew's in 1898, the works were purchased in February 1915 by the industrialist Henry Clay Frick. By May 1916 the panels were installed at Frick's new mansion in New York in the present-day Fragonard Room in The Frick Collection.