Photo: Darren Wheeler
TIEPOLO BLUE
Literary, 341pp, Sceptre, 2022
Cambridge, 1994. Professor Don Lamb is a revered art historian at the height of his powers, consumed by the book he is writing about the skies of the Venetian master Tiepolo. However, his academic brilliance belies a deep inexperience of life and love.
When an explosive piece of contemporary art is installed on the lawn of his college, it sets in motion Don’s abrupt departure from Cambridge to take up a role at a south London museum. There he befriends Ben, a young artist who draws him into the anarchic 1990s British art scene and the nightlife of Soho.
Over the course of one long, hot summer, Don glimpses a liberating new existence. But his epiphany is also a moment of self-reckoning, as his oldest friendship – and his own unexamined past – are revealed to him in a devastating new light. As Don’s life unravels, he suffers a fall from grace that that shatters his world into pieces.
JAMES CAHILL
Agent: Isobel Dixon
Assistant: Finlay Charlesworth
Biography: James Cahill was born in London. Over the past decade, he has worked in the art world and academia, combining writing and research with a role at a leading contemporary art gallery. He is currently a Research Fellow in Classics at King’s College London. His writing on art has appeared in publications including The Burlington Magazine, The Times Literary Supplement, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and The London Review of Books. He was the lead author and consulting editor of FLYING TOO CLOSE TO THE SUN (Phaidon, 2018), a survey of classical myth in art from antiquity to the present day. He was the co-curator of ‘The Classical Now’, an exhibition at King’s College London (March-April 2018), examining the relationships between ancient, modern and contemporary art.
James Cahill’s debut novel TIEPOLO BLUE was published by Sceptre in summer 2022 and has been shortlisted for the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award. The Evening Standard wrote: ‘This divine debut from art critic and academic James Cahill is the smart, sexy read you need in 2022… Not only an addictive page-turner, Cahill’s book taps into the tensions and suspicions between generations that feels incredibly relevant for our testy times.’
James Cahill’s second novel, THE VIOLET HOUR, will be published by Sceptre in 2024.