Damian Barr

@damianbarr

Writer & broadcaster. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 🌈 🖊️📚 🎭 📺 📻 🪴 🐔 🥃 He/Him www.damianbarr.com 📕 The Two Roberts is my new novel. I’ve curated an exhibition about them for Charleston in Lewes which is now in Nottingham. 📕 Maggie & Me. 📕 You Will Be Safe Here. PhD, FRSL, FRSE

2.080 Folgt18.366 Follower6.636 Posts

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Damian Barr@damianbarr· 15h

Spotted this Memento Mori among all the glitter and money of the City today.

A table tomb of grey stone outside a church in london. One end of the tomb has a darker gray stone inset that is carved with a skull enclosed by leaves.

Damian Barr@damianbarr· 11d

Pride day here in Brighton! SPF, equality and joy for all!

Damian Barr wearing a black T-shirt from Amnesty and holding a placard saying I am
Who I say I am. He is marching at a past Pride in Brighton. He is in a crowd.

Damian Barr@damianbarr· 21d

Official birthday portrait. Still celebrating. No plans to stop. 🎂 PS it’s made of Terry towelling and channeling Angela Lansbury’s fitness video.

Damian Barr in a cream Terry towelling leisure suit. He is sitting on a picnic bench in his garden. The table is busy w bowls of food and the garden is blooming. It is his 50th.

Damian Barr@damianbarr· 27d

In other news, I am about to celebrate a big birthday. So many times i never thought i’d get here. But here I am spinning around the sun with you all. Thanks and love and joy! ☀️ ❤️ 📕 🌈 🖼️ 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Damian Barr wearing a gold-ish cap during the golden hour, smiling.

Damian Barr@damianbarr· Jul 13

To me, Sam Neill will always be the handsome actual Devil aka Damien Thorn. As a kid, I got called Devil, Omen etc a lot. Sam Neill also made very good wine. So, a toast to him. 🍷

Damian Barr@damianbarr· Jul 10

I have a super abundance of cucumbers!

Damian Barr@damianbarr· Jul 7

Last night I hosted an event about queer books and bookshops at the British Library, organised by Gays the Word. It was PACKED. Our community turned up and allies were out in force and it feels so good to shares our stories and histories. The podcast is coming soon.

A poster advertising an event with writers Damian barr, Layla McCay and aj west.

Damian Barr@damianbarr· Jul 6

Was gorgeous to be in community with so many lgbtq+ writers and readers @britishlibrary.bsky.social tonight. Thanks @laylamccay.bsky.social & AJ West for being such great guests & @gaystheword.bsky.social for convening.

Damian Barr on a red-lit stage at the british library with authors Layla McCay and AJ West.

Damian Barr@damianbarr· Jun 28

Please enjoy the last of my broad beans. #glut #gardensky

A wooden bowl filled with broad beans in the pod

A yellow ceramic bowl of freshly picked broad beans

Damian Barr@damianbarr· Jun 12

My first sweetpea has bloomed!

Damian Barr@damianbarr· Jun 7

Picky Tea. #NationalDishes

A picky tea spread. Plate with crudite and oat cakes and beetooots and olives etc

Damian Barr@damianbarr· May 31

I’ve been unutterably domestique. This is delish w soda water or you can conjure an Elderflower Collins with gin.

Damian Barr@damianbarr· May 22

Magic last night @charleston watching two pals channel the independent spirit of the place and do their own very different thing. Rose McGowan & Douglas Stuart.

A flint wall topped by statues of heads, busts really. A string of log hr s illuminates the wall. It is dusk. The garden glows. Sussex scene.

A doorway in darkness. The door is open spilling light out. It is the door to Charleston farmhouse

‘The Guilty Feminist’ on stage talking to Rose McGowan. Rose is holding her dog Perlita .

Ferdia Lennon in conversation on stage with Douglas Stuart.

Damian Barr@damianbarr· May 11

One of the fanciest stops on this book tour: Dumfries House. Dinner with other writer-guests at the excellent Boswell Book Festival. Wild! I had excellent chats about Pepys, Mary Queen of Scots and capital P Political gossip. Now back to pret on the train x

A table set for 30
People in the Great Steward’s Hall at Dumfries House. It’s after dinner and the plates have been cleared but coffee cups and wine glasses abound. Huge candelabra, a tartan tablecloth, an air of decadence.

Damian Barr@damianbarr· May 8

Went to the garden centre to get away from the news and was faced with this. As I fled, a phone rang with THE BENNY HILL THEME!

A hideous hanging basket arrangement of three kinds of flower labelled as ‘patriotic mix’. It instead, white and purple. It is depressing.

Damian Barr@damianbarr· May 7

Energising your feed with my majestic spring onions. Vote Green.

A stainless steel colander full of very large spring onions.

Damian Barr@damianbarr· May 1

Been in Nottingham Castle this past week ( a willing prisoner). Working with the team here m on installing the Two Roberts exhibition which opens tonight! With a free party. RSVP via castle website. Come on down!

Damian Barr in sunglasses and baseball cap in a deckchair on the green by Nottingham castle. It is sunny.

Damian Barr in a white t and jeans standing on a makeshift stage ina corner with a 1951 black and white ballet as his backdrop.

Damian Barr@damianbarr· Apr 23

My tree peonies are giving early Bette Midler getting every part she auditioned for. Enjoy.

Big blousy scarlet tree ponies blooming inna bush against a backdrop of ivy. They are scarlet ish?

Damian Barr@damianbarr· Apr 15

Please enjoy the scent of my new notebook (moleskine, I don’t make the rules). Breaking into it today for an especially exciting job. Ps it’s vegan.

A black snakeskin effect notebook w Damian Barr embossed on it in gold.

Damian Barr@damianbarr· Mar 19

I have made a soup so packed with nutrition and goodness that it has gone back in time and saved millions from the Plague with its curative properties. For anyone that needs it today.

Damian Barr@damianbarr· Mar 18

Meet Michael Abubakar. He's an actor and you may recently have seen him in Wonka or Bad Sisters. He's the voice-all the voices--behind the Two Roberts audiobook. I think he's done an amazing job and I know lots of you do too because you get in touch to tell me. So here he is, book him (via United)!

a photo of the actor Michael Abubakar in a recording studio with a microphone in front of him. he is recording an audiobook.

Damian Barr@damianbarr· Mar 15

I wrote a poem about love and remembering, grief and loss to mark my first Mother’s Day without my wee Mum. I hope it helps you if you are missing someone today or any day.

A crumpled photo from
1976, of a woman holding a baby in her arms. The pair are in hospital. It is a
Mother and son. It is forever.

Damian Barr@damianbarr· Mar 13

Good morning from Cornwall, where I have woken up in a dream. That said, I am soon to catch a wee ferry and hailstones just blew in….

An open leaded window showing a grey sea inlet with a green headline beyond

Damian Barr@damianbarr· Mar 12

Reading this on the train and it is a tonic. So helpful on the dislocation and estrangement of being a working class artist and trying to make real work and a real living in a middle class world.

Damian Barr@damianbarr· Mar 12

Transmission was HISTORIC!

Damian Barr@damianbarr· Mar 5

Interrupting the horrors of the world to tell you that the new Mary Queen of Scots ballet by Scottish Ballet brings to stunning new life the horrors of the world past - challenges all the old tropes of her story and is so HUMAN and embodied and high-stakes that I bawled in the end. Just stunning.

Damian Barr@damianbarr· Feb 27

Pick of the day in my local oxfam bookshop (in Brighton).

Damian Barr@damianbarr· Feb 14

Should you need a big gay love story for Valentine’s Day :)

Cover of the novel The Two Roberts by Damian Barr

A snap of two paintings by Robert Colquhoun, each is a pair of men holding hands as if dancing. They are standing side by side and the pictures are hung side by side.

Damian Barr standing in front of a big photo of artists Robert MacBryde (left) and robert Colquhoun (right). Bart stands between them. The photo is black and white and the artist are at easels in their studio.

Damian Barr@damianbarr· Feb 2

100% this. When i was researching the concentration camps pioneered by the British Empire during the Boer Wars I was horrified by deaths from preventable disease. Those with typhoid were blamed for being 'dirty'. This history is not taught in UK schools. It informed my novel You Will Be Safe Here.

a close-up of a scale model of a Boer-war era british concentration camp in a musuem case in Bloemfontein. We see rows of white bell tents and low block buildings.

a poster showing 'deaths in the concentration camps' by month with comparisons to the Uk death rate. It is a poster framed by images of dying and sick children.

Damian Barr@damianbarr· Feb 1

Just finished reading Reflections in a Golden Eye by Carson McCullers. Within the first few pages a bored army captain stuffs a kitten into a mailbox. It only gets weirder and darker. It is horribly, brilliantly human. BUT HOW was it made into a film never mind one starring Elizabeth Taylor?!