I'm a writer and broadcaster. My books are 'The Two Roberts', 'You Will Be Safe Here' and 'Maggie & Me'.

'The Two Roberts' is my second novel. Meet Robert MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun: artists, lovers, outsiders. From 1930s Glasgow to wartime London and the Fifties, this is the fictional story of two truly wild lives.

They were charismatic art celebrities - collected by major institutions, photographed by Vogue, filmed by Ken Russell for the BBC. But they lived as hard as they worked, dying young and penniless yet on the verge of a comeback.

Tender, bold and deeply personal, 'The Two Roberts' is a timely love-letter to these 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. Prepare to fall in love with Bobby and Robert…

'The Two Roberts' will be published by Canongate in September 2025.

'You Will Be Safe Here' is my first novel. It's set in South Africa in 1901 and now. It explores legacies of abuse, redemption and the strength of the human spirit - there is always, light even in our very darkest moments. I didn't imagine it would feel so urgent when it was published.

'South Africa, 1901, the height of the second Boer War. Sarah van der Watt and her son are taken from their farm by force to Bloemfontein Concentration Camp where, the English promise: they will be safe.

Johannesburg, 2010. Sixteen-year-old outsider Willem just wants to be left alone with his books and his dog. Worried he's not turning out right, his ma and her boyfriend send him to New Dawn Safari Training Camp. Here they 'make men out of boys'. Guaranteed.'

Inspired by real events, You Will Be Safe Here uncovers a hidden colonial history and present-day darkness while exploring our capacity for cruelty and kindness. Here's what two writers I admire say:

'Devastating and formally ingenious, it traces the paths by which historical grief engenders present violence . A vitally brave and luminously compassionate book.'
Garth Greenwell.

'Damian Barr has written a novel concerned with single strain of human history, of how a people are made and unmade and how they go on to make and unmake others, of the stories they tell themselves to allow such things to pass.' Aminatta Forna.

'Maggie & Me' is my memoir of surviving small-town Scotland in the Thatcher years. It won Sunday Times Memoir of the Year: "Full to the brim with poignancy, humour, brutality and energetic and sometimes shimmering prose, the book confounds one's assumptions about those years and drenches the whole era in an emotionally charged comic grandeur. It is hugely affecting."

BBC Radio 4 made it a Book of the Week. Stonewall named me Writer of the Year 2013. In 2024 I helped turn in into a play for the National Theatre of Scotland.

I've also co-written two plays for Radio 4 and written a short after play for their Fact to Fiction slot.

From 2008-2023, I ran my own Literary Salon - interviewing fellow writers, profiling indie bookshops and share all kinds of bookish content. Guests included: Jojo Moyes, John Waters, Mary Beard, Yaa Gyasi, David Nicholls, Colm Tóibín, Taiye Selasi, David Mitchell and Rose McGowan. www.theliterarysalon.co.uk

My life is books - writing them, talking about them on tv and radio and interviewing other writers about their literary loves. I present my own books tv show on BBC - check out The Big Scottish Book Club on BBC iPlayer. You can follow me on twitter @damian_barr and insta @mrdamianbarr.

I live by the sea in Brighton with my husband.