Henry Henry by Allen Bratton

Pre-Order Publication date: 02/05/24
 
Meet Hal: twenty-two, gay, Catholic, chops lines of cocaine with his myWaitrose card - and reluctant heir to the noble House of Lancaster

Hal's father Henry, the sixteenth Duke of Lancaster, is half tyrant, half martyr. His investment in his eldest son has grown into an obsession. While Hal floats between internships and drinking sessions, Henry keeps him in check with passive-aggression, religious guilt, and a cruelty that Hal sometimes confuses for tenderness.

When a grouse-shooting accident – funny in retrospect – makes a romance out of Hal’s rivalry with fumblingly leftist family friend Harry Percy, Hal finds that he wants, for the first time, a life of his own. But his father is an Englishman; he will not let his son escape tradition. To save himself, Hal must reckon not only with grief and shame but with the wounds of his family's past.

Elegant and blisteringly funny, Henry Henry is a brilliant recasting of Shakespeare's history plays for the modern era - for fans of Alan Hollinghurst, Evelyn Waugh and Saltburn.

'Carnal and precise' - Raven Leilani

'You will come away from this book changed' - Kaliane Bradley

'A brilliantly glinting and twisted debut' - Seán Hewitt