London, 2014. Hal Lancaster – twenty-two, gay, Catholic, chops lines of cocaine with his myWaitrose card – is the reluctant heir of his father Henry, the sixteenth Duke of Lancaster. Henry is half tyrant, half martyr, with an investment in his eldest son that 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 Henry 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.

Read an excerpt at Literary Hub

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PREORDER U.K. – out 2 May 2024

ORDER U.S. – out now

ORDER AUDIOBOOK narrated by Sebastian Humphreys – out now

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Publicity US: Allison Miriam Smith at Unnamed Press
Publicity UK: Jessie Spivey at Jonathan Cape

Film/TV rights: Will Watkins at CAA

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Henry Henry press

“In writing “Henry Henry,” Bratton didn’t want to fall into the trope of irreconcilable sexuality and Catholicism — “the narrative of ‘never the twain shall meet,’ because I think the twain has met a lot.”” – “These Gay Novels Offer a ‘More Interesting Conversation’ About Faith,” by Joshua Barone for the New York Times

“Darkly witty … a harrowing chronicle of survival and healing from generational trauma.” – Publishers Weekly