Granta Podcast: Alan Bratton

Episode Date: November 29, 2024
Host: Josie Mitchell (A), Leo Robson (B)
Guest: Alan Bratton (C), Novelist

Episode Overview

This episode of the Granta Podcast features an in-depth conversation with Alan Bratton, whose debut novel Henry Henry reimagines Shakespeare’s Henriad for the modern day. Hosts Josie Mitchell and Leo Robson engage Bratton in a discussion about adapting classic themes for contemporary audiences, weaving trauma and queerness into historical frameworks, and vividly recreating English life as an American novelist. The episode balances literary analysis, thematic exploration, and discussion of writing craft—all centered on Bratton’s dark, witty, and ambitious first novel.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Introduction to Henry Henry and Its Shakespearean Roots

• The novel follows Hal Lancaster, a 21st-century British duke, openly gay and Catholic, wrestling with addiction and the legacy of abuse.
• Henry Henry is described as “a modern reworking of the Henriad” (00:28), referencing Shakespeare’s Richard II, Henry IV (Parts 1 & 2), and Henry V, focusing particularly on Henry IV Part One and the dynamic between Hal and his father.
• Tone: Hosts note the “interesting clash of tones, lot of wit and satire and social observation. And then there’s also this darker underpinning.” (02:49)
• The narrative links contemporary trauma plots (exploring backstory and etiology) with Shakespearean action, “which supposedly doesn’t have a trauma plot.” (03:36)

Fanfiction, Queerness, and Modern Adaptation

• The book draws on tropes of slash fiction—explicitly queering relationships that were subtextual in Shakespeare’s plays, especially between Hal and Henry Percy (Hotspur).
• “People have pointed to that being an example of modern day slash fiction, taking existing stories and then finding a gay narrative in them…and imagines more explicit gay themes” — Josie Mitchell (04:27)
• Precedents like Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho and Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet are discussed as other “queer” Shakespearean adaptations. (05:41)

American Perspective on Modern English Life

• Bratton’s immersive knowledge of English class dynamics and contemporary London culture impresses the hosts:
  • “It’s clearly the work of a major Anglophile…more immersed in some of these reference points than you might expect an English writer” — Leo Robson (07:51)
• The sense of detail is described as “plausible in the reading…a terrifically involving book.” (08:42)

Memorable Quotes & Notable Moments

Reading: Alan Bratton (C) – Scene from Henry Henry

[08:57–12:28]

“His hands had been shaking so badly that he'd broken one cigarette and had to light another. That was when it had finally felt like it was happening. Before it had felt like an inexplicable mistake, an experience he had been given by accident that would soon be taken back... If he was suffering now, thought Hal, it was because someone from whom he was descended had done something wrong before he, Hal, had ever had a chance to do what was right. Now, having been punished, he was here in the garden again.”

Author’s Process & Thematic Exploration

On Engaging with English History and Class (12:51)

• Bratton: “I grew up with Shakespeare… became a medievalist also, slightly by accident… When I was an undergraduate, I did study briefly in London…the 2015 election…being in London in that particular moment shaped how I would go on to fuse the sort of present day sociopolitical situation with my interpretations of history.”
• He avoids direct historical analogues (e.g., “Boris Johnson is just like Richard II”) and instead draws out “resonances that are a bit more complex.” (13:20)

On Modernizing the Aristocrat (15:59)

• “I didn't want to do a modern monarchy story…What I find interesting about that is that the position of a duke has not changed as much as the position of a monarch…there is still this system of tenant farming. I have…my fictional family, the Lancasters, owning lands that would be kind of in that area…before ascending to the throne.” (16:22)

On Queerness and Sexuality in Adaptation (26:17)

• “There was never a world in which this was not going to be a queer story. My interest is in writing queer literature, and I wouldn't have adapted the Henriad if the instructions were to make it straight.”
• “The characters that I felt had the most interesting possibilities in terms of queerness, I just went ahead and made queer…there's still very much a lingering cultural heteronormativity.”
• Catholicism amplifies the outsider status:
  • “He's an outsider in the sort of global Catholic community…as an out gay man. He's an outsider in gay circles because he's a Catholic…he never quite fits into one role.” (30:19)

On Research and Authenticity (32:49, 34:36)

• Bratton describes absorbing details of London life through lived experience, not systematic research:
  • “I tend to integrate things in retrospect…when I was studying in London I was doing a lot of that because they didn't have…those little packs of pre mix drinks [in America].”
  • “People are kind of like, you know, how do you know about the bus? And I'm like, I don't know, I just do.” (34:36)

On Building a Fictional Universe (36:49)

• Stories published in Granta flesh out different generations: “The first story I published was ‘Barbarism’, which is about Henry and Richard's relationship… The second, ‘Honeymoon’, is about Richard’s perspective and really has nothing to do with Henry because Richard doesn't think about Henry nearly as much as Henry thinks about Richard.”
• “This world has had me in a chokehold since about 2016. I keep going deeper and deeper into it.” (38:31)

On Tone & Depicting Abuse (39:17, 40:07)

• The book uses a satirically distancing tone to mediate trauma:
  • “Tone is very much something I work out by intuition…I had an idea of how Hal’s consciousness worked…He has this overwhelming impulse to make a joke out of everything…it’s his first response, and often his only response.”
• The connection to Shakespearean “pranks” is made:
  • “Often what he thinks of as humor is cruelty. And then in turn, what really is cruelty he thinks of as humor.” (42:09)
  • “He has to look seriously at this and come to the realization that the cruel things really are just cruel.” (43:11)

Literary Influences Beyond Shakespeare (43:50)

• “Probably the biggest influence on Henry Henry, besides Shakespeare is The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot…especially in its treatment of sexual assault...I wanted to draw attention to the complexity and ambiguity of disclosure. The expectation…might be that Henry is going to be…unmasked and brought to justice…that isn't what Hal is interested in. He…feels that it would be too damaging in its own way, and so he has this approach of speaking about it in allusion and in suggestion.” (44:10)

Notable Quotes (with Timestamps)

• “It does kind of reconcile or accommodate what we now call like the trauma plot to a Shakespearean narrative, which supposedly doesn’t have a trauma plot…Alan Bratton shows that you can certainly do both here in this book.” — Leo Robson (03:36)
• “No one in this book is entirely monstrous, and desire and pleasure can exist in some surprising places in the book.” — Josie Mitchell (39:17)
• “There was never a world in which this was not going to be a queer story.” — Alan Bratton (26:17)
• “He’s an outsider in the sort of global Catholic community…as an out gay man. He's an outsider in gay circles because he's a Catholic.” — Alan Bratton (30:19)
• “Tone is very much something I work out by intuition…He has this overwhelming impulse to make a joke out of everything…even though it's technically third person, it. It's kind of Hal narrating his own life to himself.” — Alan Bratton (40:07)
• “I wanted to draw attention to the complexity and ambiguity of disclosure…The expression of one's experience need not be a confession or of revelation in the way that we've come to understand it.” — Alan Bratton (45:23)

Timeline of Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment Description | |------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:03 | Show introduction, hosts present format and guest | | 00:28-04:27| Hosts introduce Henry Henry, discuss Shakespearean adaptation & tone | | 04:27-07:25| Sexuality, fanfiction, and precedent adaptations like My Own Private Idaho | | 07:25-08:42| American immersion in English culture (Bratton’s authenticity and detail) | | 08:57-12:28| Alan Bratton’s reading from Henry Henry | | 12:28-15:59| Bratton on Anglophilia, London life, and resisting direct historical analogues | | 15:59-19:18| Reimagining historical characters as modern aristocrats, world-building decisions | | 21:32-25:44| Adapting character dynamics from the Henriad, father-son focus vs. Falstaff | | 25:44-32:40| Integrating queerness and Catholicism, navigating outsider identity | | 32:49-34:36| Discussing research methods and rendering believable contemporary London | | 36:34-39:17| Short stories and expansion of the book’s fictional universe | | 39:17-43:11| Tone, depiction of abuse, humor, and cruelty | | 43:44-46:56| Other influences (The Waste Land), ambiguity of disclosure about trauma |

Conclusion

This episode is a rich dialogue about the interplay of literary tradition and modernity, identity and trauma, adaptation and originality. Alan Bratton’s Henry Henry emerges as both a searching queer reworking of Shakespeare and a contemporary social novel, attentive to class, religion, and the complexities of surviving abuse. The discussion will be particularly rewarding for readers and writers interested in the art of literary adaptation, trauma narrative, and the vivid portrayal of a culture from the outside in.

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