Author Guide · Literary Fiction
Books Written by
Alan Hollinghurst published his first novel in 1988, while he was deputy editor of the Times Literary Supplement, and has written only six more since: seven novels in 36 years. The first, The Swimming-Pool Library (1988), was set in gay London in the summer of 1983, and Edmund White called it the best book about gay life yet written by an English author. The fourth, The Line of Beauty, won the Booker Prize in 2004, was adapted by Andrew Davies for BBC Two in 2006 and reached the stage at the Almeida Theatre in 2025. In 2025 he was knighted for services to literature and won the David Cohen Prize for a lifetime’s achievement. This guide covers his 7 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 7 key books · 1988–2024 · Updated October 2026
ClickTap a spine to jump to that book below.
Quick answer
Alan Hollinghurst has written seven novels, from The Swimming-Pool Library (1988) to Our Evenings (2024). The best known is The Line of Beauty (2004), which won the Booker Prize; The Folding Star (1994) was shortlisted for it, and The Stranger’s Child (2011) was longlisted. Start with The Line of Beauty. Below: each novel in order, what it is about, and how they connect.
Where to Start with Alan Hollinghurst
If you want his defining book
→ The Line of Beauty (2004) — the 2004 Booker winner, set in Thatcher’s London.
If you want the debut that made his name
→ The Swimming-Pool Library (1988) — gay London in the summer of 1983.
If you want a novel that spans a century
→ The Stranger’s Child (2011) — one weekend in 1913 and the stories told about it afterwards.
If you want his most recent novel
→ Our Evenings (2024) — a life told as an actor’s memoir.
7 Alan Hollinghurst Books, in Order
The Swimming-Pool Library
Will Beckwith, 25, rich and idle, saves the life of the 83-year-old Lord Nantwich in a public lavatory, and is asked to write his biography. Reading Nantwich’s diaries — school, colonial Sudan, the war, a prosecution for indecency — Will learns how much of gay London’s past touches his own family. Edmund White called it “surely the best book about gay life yet written by an English author”.
The Folding Star
Edward Manners, 33, moves to a town in Flanders to teach English to two pupils and becomes obsessed with one of them, the 17-year-old Luc. Alongside runs the story of Edgard Orst, a fictional symbolist painter of the 1890s, and the model who swam out to sea at Ostend and was never seen again. It was shortlisted for the 1994 Booker Prize.
The Spell
A comedy of four men: Robin Woodfield, an architect in his forties; his younger lover Justin; Justin’s ex-boyfriend Alex, who comes to visit them at their country cottage; and Robin’s 22-year-old son Danny, who draws Alex into the clubs and drugs of 1990s London.
The Line of Beauty
Nick Guest, a middle-class Oxford graduate writing a doctorate on Henry James, moves into the Notting Hill house of the Feddens, whose father Gerald is a new Conservative MP. Across 1983, 1986 and 1987 he falls in with the family’s world of money and power, has affairs with Leo and with the rich, closeted Wani Ouradi, and dances with Margaret Thatcher at a party, while AIDS arrives. It was adapted for BBC Two in 2006, with Dan Stevens as Nick.
The Stranger’s Child
In 1913 the young poet Cecil Valance visits his Cambridge friend George Sawle at the family house, Two Acres, and writes a poem in the autograph book of George’s sister Daphne. Cecil is killed in the First World War and the poem becomes famous; five sections spread over the following century follow how its story is retold and rewritten by families and biographers. It was longlisted for the 2011 Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize.
The Sparsholt Affair
It opens in Oxford in 1940, where the student Freddie Green watches the 17-year-old David Sparsholt, who is engaged to Connie, and introduces him to Evert Dax, with whom David has a secret affair before going to war. The rest follows David’s son Johnny, a painter, from the 1960s to the 2010s, living in the shadow of a scandal around his father that the book only half explains.
Our Evenings
Written as the memoir of the actor Dave Win, son of a Burmese father he never met and an English dressmaker. At 13 he wins a scholarship to a public school, paid for by the wealthy Hadlows, whose son Giles bullies him and later becomes a Conservative minister. The novel follows Dave’s life on stage and in love from the 1960s to the end of his life.
In What Order to Read Alan Hollinghurst
None of the novels is a sequel, so they can be read in any order. Read in publication order, they move from one summer or one obsession (the first three books) to novels that cover decades: The Stranger’s Child, The Sparsholt Affair and Our Evenings each jump forward in time, and leave what happened in between for the reader to piece together.
Many readers start with The Line of Beauty, and it is the natural bridge between the two halves. If you like it, go back to The Swimming-Pool Library for the early London book, then on to The Stranger’s Child.
A reading path
1. The Line of Beauty (2004)
2. The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)
3. The Stranger’s Child (2011)
4. The Folding Star (1994)
5. Our Evenings (2024)
Everything Else Alan Hollinghurst Published
Beyond the 7 key books: 7 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Poetry
3
3 books · 1975–1982
- 1975Isherwood is at Santa Monicaa poem printed as a broadsheet by the Sycamore Press, Oxford
- 1978Poetry Introduction 4Faber anthology with ten of his poems
- 1982Confidential Chats with Boyspoetry pamphlet, Sycamore Press
Translations and editions
4
4 books · 1991–2012
- 1991Bajazethis translation of the tragedy by Jean Racine
- 2000Three NovelsRonald Firbank’s novels, which he edited
- 2001A. E. Housman: Poemsa selection he chose for Faber
- 2012Bérénice and Bajazettwo Racine plays in his translation
The years · 1954–2025
Quick facts about Alan Hollinghurst
- Known for
- Alan Hollinghurst is known for slow, finely written novels about gay life and English class and history, above all The Line of Beauty, which won the 2004 Booker Prize.
- 1954
- Born in Stroud, Gloucestershire
- 1982
- Joins the Times Literary Supplement
- 2025
- Knighted; wins the David Cohen Prize
- Born
- 26 May 1954, Stroud, Gloucestershire; only child of a bank manager
- Education
- Canford School; Magdalen College, Oxford (BA 1975, MLitt 1979)
- Worked
- Times Literary Supplement from 1982, deputy editor 1985–1990
- Novels
- Seven, published in the UK by Picador
- Prizes
- Booker Prize (2004); James Tait Black Memorial Prize (1994); David Cohen Prize (2025)
- Honours
- Knighted for services to literature, New Year Honours 2025
The red mark is 2004: The Line of Beauty, which won the Booker Prize that year.
How Alan Hollinghurst Writes
He writes slowly: seven novels in 36 years, all of them, he told The Paris Review in 2011, at the wooden desk his parents bought him at school. He trained as a scholar first; his Oxford MLitt thesis was on Ronald Firbank, E. M. Forster and L. P. Hartley, and Henry James runs through The Line of Beauty, whose hero is writing a doctorate on him.
His novels put gay lives at the centre of English social history — the aristocracy, the Conservative party, Oxford, country houses — and treat sex as frankly as anything else. He has said he only chafes at the label “gay writer” “if it’s thought to describe everything that’s interesting about my books.”
From The Stranger’s Child on, he builds novels in sections years or decades apart and leaves the gaps unexplained, so the reader learns, as the characters do, how stories change in the retelling. He keeps research to what he needs: “I’ve always been wary of research – beyond the basic need to get things right,” he told the Booker Prizes in 2024.
Watch
Alan Hollinghurst: The Waterstones Interview
Hollinghurst talks to Waterstones about Our Evenings, his seventh novel, published in 2024.
Frequently asked questions about Alan Hollinghurst’s books
How many books has Alan Hollinghurst written?
Seven novels, from The Swimming-Pool Library (1988) to Our Evenings (2024). Besides the novels he has published poetry, including the pamphlet Confidential Chats with Boys (1982), translations of Racine’s Bajazet and Bérénice, and edited selections of A. E. Housman and Ronald Firbank.
What are Alan Hollinghurst’s books in order?
The Swimming-Pool Library (1988), The Folding Star (1994), The Spell (1998), The Line of Beauty (2004), The Stranger’s Child (2011), The Sparsholt Affair (2017) and Our Evenings (2024).
Where should I start with Alan Hollinghurst?
With The Line of Beauty (2004), his Booker winner about a young man living with a Conservative MP’s family in 1980s London. If you prefer to start at the beginning, The Swimming-Pool Library (1988) is his first novel.
What is Alan Hollinghurst’s most famous book?
The Line of Beauty, which won the Booker Prize in 2004. In 2019 The Guardian placed it 38th in its list of the 100 best books of the 21st century.
Has The Line of Beauty been adapted?
Yes, twice. Andrew Davies adapted it as a three-part series for BBC Two, broadcast in May 2006, with Dan Stevens as Nick Guest and Hayley Atwell as Catherine Fedden. A stage version by Jack Holden, directed by Michael Grandage, ran at the Almeida Theatre in London from October to November 2025.
Are Alan Hollinghurst’s novels connected?
No. Each novel stands alone, with its own characters. They share places and themes — London, Oxford, English country houses, gay life across the twentieth century — so they reward reading in any order.
What prizes has Alan Hollinghurst won?
The Booker Prize for The Line of Beauty (2004), the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for The Folding Star (1994) and the Somerset Maugham Award for The Swimming-Pool Library. The Folding Star was also shortlisted for the Booker. In 2025 he won the David Cohen Prize, a lifetime award for a writer from the UK or Ireland.
Is Alan Hollinghurst still alive?
Yes. He was born on 26 May 1954 in Stroud, Gloucestershire. He was knighted for services to literature in the 2025 New Year Honours, and his latest novel, Our Evenings, came out in 2024.
Is Alan Hollinghurst a gay writer?
He is gay and all his novels have gay main characters, from Will Beckwith in The Swimming-Pool Library to Dave Win in Our Evenings. He has said he only minds the label “if it’s thought to describe everything that’s interesting about my books.”
What is The Stranger’s Child about?
A poem written during a weekend visit in 1913 by Cecil Valance, a young poet later killed in the First World War, and what families and biographers make of it over the following century. The title comes from Tennyson’s In Memoriam A.H.H.
Footnotes
- Alan Hollinghurst — Wikipedia
- The Line of Beauty — Wikipedia
- Alan Hollinghurst interview: The Line of Beauty 20 years on — The Booker Prizes, 2024
- Alan Hollinghurst, The Art of Fiction No. 214 — The Paris Review, 2011
- Alan Hollinghurst recognised in the King’s 2025 New Year’s Honours — Pan Macmillan
- The Line of Beauty — Almeida Theatre, 2025
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“Winning, of course, changed my life and my prospects at once.”
— Alan Hollinghurst, on the 2004 Booker Prize, interview with the Booker Prizes (2024)
If this shelf interested you, the full bookshelf has more: reading lists by theme, author guides, and notes on what is actually worth your time.
Browse the full bookshelf Get book recommendations