Drayton and Mackenzie by Alexander Starritt

A TIMES/SUNDAY TIMES, GQ, FINANCIAL TIMES AND BLOOMBERG BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025

'A big, bustling novel about love, friendship, money, ambition and the 21st century, packed with humour and intelligent observations ... I finished it tear-stained' Sunday Times

'Will have you hooked ... an ode to the enduring power of male friendship' The Times Best Summer Books

'My book of the summer' Janice Turner

'Thrilling' Guardian

Longlistedfor the FT and Schroders Business Book of the Year 2025

For the first time since university, James and Roland’s paths through life – one drawn in straight lines, the other squiggled and meandering – began to cross…

James Drayton has always found things too easy. By the time he leaves university, he’s still waiting for a challenge worthy of his ambitions. Roland Mackenzie, on the other hand, is an impulsive risk-taker, a charismatic drifter with a knack for derailing his own attempts to get started in life.

When a chance encounter in a pub reunites these old acquaintances, it sets them on an unpredictable course through the upheavals of the twenty-first century, and sparks an unlikely alliance. Sent to Aberdeen during the financial crisis to lay off hundreds of workers, James and Roland begin to wonder: what if they were made for more than this? What if together they could build something grand and lasting – something that might even change the world?