‘He always knew that when his life came tumbling down, it would occur in public.'

May 2021, London.

Campbell Flynn – art historian and celebrity intellectual – is entering the empire of middle age. Fuelled by an appetite for admiration and the finer things, controversy and novelty, he doesn’t take people half as seriously as they take themselves. Which will prove the first of his huge mistakes.

The second? Milo Mangasha, his beguiling and provocative student. Milo inhabits a more precarious world, has experiences and ideas which excite his teacher. He also has a plan.

Over the course of an incendiary year, a web of crimes and secrets and scandals will be revealed, and Campbell Flynn may not be able to protect himself from the shattering exposure of all that his privilege really involves.

‘A brilliant state-of-the-nation novel that pulls down the facades of high society and knocks over the “good liberal” house of cards. An utter joy to read.’ MONICA ALI

‘I loved this novel – loved its ambition and scale and scope and certainty – its panache and brio and the joy in the writing.’ PETER MORGAN

‘Caledonian Road is a remarkable feat of imaginative empathy, panoramic and witty, a Dickensian dream that blazes with profundity and philosophical inquiry. It is O’Hagan’s best novel yet.’ NIKITA LALWANI

‘Andrew O’Hagan has made more than a great book – he has made a social miracle.’ JOSHUA COHEN