Caledonian Road in London, the main street leading north from the new center of the capital, King's Cross, crosses the district of Islington, where post-war public housing, social housing with waiting lists of years, and rows and rows of coveted and expensive Georgian terraced houses coexist around secluded tree-lined squares. In this area of contrasts, known as "the Cally" by Londoners, the renowned writer and journalist Andrew O'Hagan (Glasgow, 1968) sets his novel Caledonian Road, a Dickensian fresco with touches of tragicomedy and acidic humor that dissects with a sharp scalpel all layers of contemporary London society, that is, post-Covid and post-Brexit, bringing together wealthy aristocrats and members of the cultural intelligentsia, with hip-hop-loving hackers, street gang leaders, and illegal immigrant traffickers.
As explained during his visit to Spain, O'Hagan, editor of the prestigious London Review of Books and Esquire, member of the Royal Society of Literature and three-time nominee for the Booker Prize for works such as Our Fathers, The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe, The Secret Life, or his Unauthorized Autobiography of Julian Assange; his idea was to capture the zeitgeist of a convulsive, frenetic, and fluid era slipping through our fingers. "The UK changed a lot in the 1990s, and only now do we see those consequences. Before, it was a small and very traditional island, but very powerful, and there was a clear idea of community, of unity. From the 90s, Tony Blair deregulated London, and the city began to grow excessively, and that, almost without us realizing it, caused the values of the whole country to start changing," he maintains.
"Today, London is a corrosive and accelerated, hostile city, where oligarchs from half the world, for a few years many Russians, come to launder their dirty money, and where people on the street show a ruthless attitude towards immigrants. We have become a much more belligerent and somewhat embittered society," laments the author. "So, in the midst of a pandemic, I looked around and realized that, although there are many great writers with brilliant novels, no one had captured that London of ruthless technology, immigration issues, and unbridled greed, and I had to write it myself," he says jokingly.
From the rich urban villas of Thornhill Square to the docks of Essex, through the university halls of King's College, squatter flats, the editorial offices of the fictitious newspaper Commentator, the rooms of the British Museum, illegal factories in Leicester, the occasional prison, or the House of Lords, O'Hagan traverses the entire spectrum of current British society through the famous academic Campbell Flynn, a renowned art critic of humble origins but married to a woman from that landowning caste with "invisible money", who has just published a renowned biography of Vermeer and written a highly praised essay on "the orgy of white contrition" for The Atlantic.
"I have been asked a lot how much of me is in Campbell Flynn, and although I must admit that he has a life trajectory similar to mine, as from working-class origins in Scotland he made a place for himself in London's intelligentsia, his inner pain is his own," explains O'Hagan. "I have no trouble reconciling my past with my present. I am not obsessed with money or fame. I have no social ambition. However, he wants to measure up to the aristocrats, and that is his downfall," the journalist concludes. "Flynn is not comfortable with himself, something very common in people we consider successful in our society, and this book is partly about discovering why."
In this sense, O'Hagan believes that the catalyst for this instability has been several successive crises, from Covid and Brexit to the war in Ukraine, which have shown the incongruities and contradictions of our society, one in which, as in the UK, a Russian tycoon can have tea with certain nobles with whom he does business while extorting his illegal workers, buying art in prestigious galleries, and evading taxes. Flynn is a guide, with his flaws, to this underworld. His life of refinement, carefully constructed, is a mask that fits with the facade of the city: the dazzling art fairs and fashion shows hide the underlying darkness.
"Since the 90s, London has been a hostile city where oligarchs from half the world come to launder their dirty money, and people are ruthless towards immigrants," he says.
And much of that darkness, O'Hagan asserts, stems from an aristocratic and economic caste that he mercilessly satirizes in the book, where corrupt businessmen with the title of Sir and dukes nicknamed "Rogue" are splattered with all kinds of scandals and public lynchings. "I think we are living the last gasps of this British imperialist policy in which we believed ourselves to be the masters of the world. I remember the Falklands War, which happened when I was a teenager, and then we thought that something like that would never happen again," recalls the writer. "Well, it has been a slow process, but we are on the right track. The British upper class used to derive their power from colonialism, from their global superiority, and now they are in trouble because they do not know how to exist in the current world," he maintains.
In fact, he points out with humor, he was very surprised not to have received demands or, at least, complaints, for the sharp portrait he paints of quite recognizable characters in the circle. "Something curious about writing fiction is that if you create suspicious, bad, immoral, and corrupt characters, those who inspire them will never admit that they see themselves reflected, that it is them. Who is going to say, 'Do you know that bad character, that terrible and corrupt individual? That's me.' They pretend it's not happening. So far, no one has recognized themselves, and if they did, they remained silent," he points out ironically.
"In reality, the nobles of my country are a very comical species living in a world of delusion and outdated power that is leaking like the Titanic after the iceberg. They no longer have that power. They own houses, lands, money, and resources, yes, some hold positions in the House of Lords, which is like a room of elders, but everyone knows and no one says that the next generation will not retain this power," notes the journalist, who clarifies: "What I am saying is not an attack, it is not about abolishing the past. It is simply about recognizing that the past is ridiculous. Just as we do not feel nostalgic for the times of slavery or when women had no social rights, we will not feel nostalgic for the aristocracy, for those relics with wigs and dressed in red coats competing to kill a fox."
This revolution, which O'Hagan considers "already underway and inevitable," encompasses in his opinion not only political and economic power but all kinds of social values hitherto immovable such as identity, sexuality, and even the foundations of capitalism. "We are experiencing a revolution that will forever end all kinds of privileges, and the way to see it is by observing the youth. Progress consists of recognizing the ridiculousness of our customs and replacing it with something slightly better. It's not perfect, but I hope it's a little better. For example, look at Trump, to mention someone very famous. His idea of women is as eloquent and sexist as speaking disdainfully of them and even grabbing them by the pussy. My father used to speak like that, but that's something a 20-year-old will never do," he argues. "Change happens across generations. I don't want to be falsely optimistic, saying that everything is fine, because it's not. Andrew Tate exists, there are young people obsessed with porn, and toxic masculinity has not died, but now we know it's toxic, just like with the racist comments so common in the past. And from there, change is born."
"What I mean," he elaborates, "is that we don't inherit prejudices. My mother's obsession was for me to marry 'a good Catholic girl,' and my father called us faggots for wearing a pink shirt and using hair gel in the 80s," he recalls. "But I, perhaps because I'm a journalist, when I interview someone today, I grab my notebook and recorder, I go to ask questions and write an article, and I'm not concerned about anyone's sexuality or their private opinions on topics like politics or religion," reflects the journalist. "Maybe in a decade, you can tell me I was too optimistic, but things are changing slowly. After writing Oliver Twist, Dickens thought it would be the end of orphans and child suffering. And without denying that world no longer exists, try telling that to the children trying to cross by boat from France to the UK."
A world where everything is for sale
In this sense, to temper the optimism a bit, there are two key elements in the book - and in our world - that concern O'Hagan greatly: politics and technology. Speaking of the former, the writer considers that we were very naive. "I remember when in the 90s we all congratulated ourselves with that 'end of history' by Fukuyama, that idea that liberal democracy had triumphed forever. Well, it didn't triumph in Russia or China, maybe not even in the UK or Spain. Today we continue to learn about inequality and the limits of liberalism," he opines ironically.
"Democracy is a great idea, but one must always bear in mind that one's freedom is another's prison, as with debates about the limits of freedom of expression. The problem arises when everything becomes radicalized and opinions try to be imposed almost at gunpoint or by storming the Congress as in the United States," notes the writer. "Above all, this book is a critique of blind fanatics and intolerant individuals, those who do not understand that parliaments and laws are the only viable alternative for coexistence." A part of society that, in his view, is what has caused the misfortune of Brexit, which he considers "a very deep hangover difficult to reverse".
"It has been a complete divorce, to use a metaphor. The British have separated from a beautiful and intelligent woman who perhaps wasn't perfect and had her problems, but who was interesting, cultured, incredible. And now we are that guy drinking whiskey in a bar thinking about how we can get back with her," he explains with a hint of regret. "We thought we would laugh at the Italians, the Spanish, and all Europeans, and now we have seen that it will take a whole generation to reverse that. We have given up everything that Europe offers to be in Leicester, on a rainy Tuesday night, having a pint and saying, 'Wow, we are all British'."
Regarding technology, which he considers the great theme of our time, O'Hagan points out that it is still being assimilated. "A current simple mobile phone contains more technology than what took Apollo 11 to the Moon, which is incredible if you were told about it without having experienced it. The question is: Is it falling into the wrong hands? Will technology become a tool for fabulous opportunities, justice, and equality, or will it become, as sometimes happens, a tool for war, exploitation, pornography, unreality, lies?," he wonders. "The example is Facebook, which started as a great communication tool that eliminated distances. But now, it is the greatest marketing tool in history, dedicated to monetizing us," he laments.
However, the journalist maintains his optimism and faith in the future, in a youth that he believes will be "much better than this departing generation discussed in the book. We are already experiencing the consequences of all these changes, and one of the great legacies of the austerity brought by Brexit and the pandemic is that injustices will not be tolerated. Why shouldn't everyone have the right to come and live and work in the UK? Or why did more poor and black people die during COVID?" he challenges. "Epidemics and crises, as history shows, shake our foundations, show a society who we really are. That's why I believe we will live with the truths we learned for a long time, and they will permeate the citizens of the future," he concludes.