“Boswell is one of the world’s great festivals…”
Linda Brown
Andrew O’Hagan, Ayrshire author of Mayflies, is a very busy man. When I catch up with him for a craic, he’s just returned home after more than a year on tour publicising his latest bestselling novel, Caledonian Road, published last March.
“I’ve toured America, Canada, Australia, India, Germany, Italy… I’ve been all around the world with Caledonian Road. People have really taken to it, and to Mayflies,” he tells me.
After all that time on the road, he must be relieved to be home?
“Oh yes, last year has put my joy of travel to the test. When I was young and sitting looking out my English classroom window at St. Michael’s Academy in Kilwinning, thinking, ‘maybe I could be a writer one day and travel the world,’ I never imagined I’d get to the day I was moaning about having to go to Australia too many times,” Andrew laughs.
Recently, Andrew has been announced as a speaker at the hugely popular Boswell Book Festival held at the grand location of Dumfries House. I’m interested to know if he can give AM readers a sneaky peek into the subject of his talk.
“I’m doing a keynote address at Boswell Book Festival this year, something I haven’t done before there. It’s a big talk on humour, looking at funniness, satire and jokes in a Scottish context, going all the way back to my great favourite, Robert Burns. Although there’s a lot of social commentary and political inquiry in what I’ve tried to write over my life, the bottom line and heart of it all for me is comedy.”
Andrew grew up experiencing Ayrshire humour and observational comedy through his school friends, teachers, and family. His mum was a school cleaner, and helping her and the other cleaners with the ‘big clean’ during the school holidays, provided him with jokes and patter that later became foundational to his writing.
“Laughter through tears, overcoming adversity with comedy has been a central thing in my writing all the way through, even in a sad story like Mayflies. At Boswell I’ll be using my own work as a jumping off point, but also looking at the work of great comedians like Billy Connolly and Chic Murray.”
Making his return appearance at Boswell must mean Andrew values this Ayrshire book festival?
“It does,” he confirms. “Boswell is one of the world’s great festivals and has established itself as an absolute must in the cultural calendar, not only of people in Ayrshire, but throughout the country. It’s famous now, but I remember it when it was just a couple of writers and a dug. It’s grown into a fantastic celebration of writing talent from all over the world, but with a particular focus on Scotland and on Ayrshire. The festival organisers always make a special place at the centre of Boswell for local talent and the festival’s Scottishness has become pronounced in a really beautiful way. People are lucky to have it, and they should support it, because it’s not every shire in the country that can sustain a world-class book festival.”
Returning to Andrew’s Kilwinning roots, we discuss his childhood, his love for reading – “My favourite author growing up was Ayrshire 19th century novelist, John Galt. His books are hilarious,” – and for Kilwinning library – “I was one of those kids in the 1970s and 80s in Ayrshire, who would read every single book in the library.”
Hanging around Irvine New Town with his mates in the 1980s later inspired his book Mayflies. “That novel was very auto-biographical – a book about male friendship and how the decades of life change, and put pressure, on friendship.”
Mayflies was adapted into an excellent TV programme in 2022. I so enjoyed watching it and ask if Andrew did too?
“I loved it. I was an executive producer on that show and was there with the film makers all the way through. We spent a lot of time in Ayrshire scouting for locations, discussing the project, showing the actors the beauties of the Ayrshire weather on dreich days when the sea was roaring at Doonfoot and Troon and just having a fantastic experience. I was very proud of the result.”
We move on to chat about the success of Andrew’s most recent bestseller, the epic Caledonian Road, which red-faced, I confess, I’ve not yet read. Exploring the complexities and contradictions of contemporary British society, Caledonian Road has been described as a state-of-the-nation novel and compared to the work of big socialist novelists like Dickens, Trollope and Zola – and Andrew is delighted about that.
“Caledonian Road is set in London and has a cast of 60 characters from all walks of life, from the aristocracy and the Royal Family right down to Russian oligarchs, street gangs, garment workers, cleaners and gangsters,” he says. “People love reading about class, politics and money. Caledonian Road is a big, exciting book, that keeps readers up all night, burning the midnight oil, to see what happens next. People love a page-turner.”
Caledonian Road sounds my kind of book. I make a mental note to buy it at the Boswell Festival bookshop and, fingers crossed, get my copy signed.
And what of the future? Well, Andrew has a short non-fiction book called On Friendship, due to be published this September. “It’s a personal book about one of the most important subjects that exists – lifetime friendships.”
Currently, he’s also working on his next novel. Set in a small Ayrshire town in 1979, a time when the shadow of the Irish Troubles loomed over the west coast of Scotland, the book tells the story of a family full of secrets and deeply involved in the Troubles.
Andrew explains, “I think it’s a novelist’s job, especially after nearly fifty years, to take the opportunity to unfold the private life of an imagined Ayrshire community in relation to the sectarian, religious, political and social troubles that existed, but also keep the humour and warmheartedness, keep the beating heart of the community and just try to write from reality. There’s never been a book like this that really got inside a family’s secrets in Ayrshire in 1979. All the music of that period, the Avon products, the mini-skirts, blue eye-shadow, Harp beer, the great big warm summer of 1976, and the Queen’s Silver Jubilee of ‘77 – how we experienced them on the streets of Ayrshire communities. All of that pours into this novel of Ayrshire life. I’ve never written a book as close to a living community as this one. I’m enjoying writing it as you can probably hear.”
Our chat-time is coming to a close, and I suspect Andrew’s desperate to get back to his laptop and immerse himself in his work. But one last question. Does he have a tip for any aspiring Ayrshire authors out there?
“The best advice is to understand that you don’t get it right first time. Writing books is the art of drafting and redrafting. Just get what you can down, and then fix it and fix it and fix it again. Remember the great Scottish cliché from Robert the Bruce – if at first you don’t succeed – rewrite it.”
Sound advice indeed. I must take it!
