Award-winning author Douglas Stuart discusses how better communities and places for working-class people can be built.

Stuart’s Shuggie Bain won the 2020 Booker Prize. Set in 1981 in a dying Glasgow, his portrayal of working-class life – especially the remarkable Agnes Bain and Shuggie Bain and the families forced to grift to survive – has been praised widely. It’s a story of struggling communities in left-behind mining towns in a society in turmoil; of alcoholism and poverty and trying to live a normal life in a place decaying around you; and of making do. But it’s also about love and hope. Though set in the early eighties, Shuggie Bain is a book for today, too, with its coverage of issues affecting many towns and cities around the world.

Stuart talks about the novel, Glasgow in 1981, the failures of urban planning, and the possibilities of improvement in the future.

In conversation with Bristol Ideas director Andrew Kelly.

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Festival of the Future City: Douglas Stuart