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AllanRadcliffe

Allan Radcliffe — Author of The Old Haunts and Blurred Faces

Author of

Blurred Faces book cover

Blurred Faces

Latest Release An Irish Independent Book of the Year 2025

‘I mean, it’s nothing really. An old face from the past.’

When two men meet on a dating app, it’s supposed to be a casual encounter between strangers.

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Outdoor portrait of Allan Radcliffe wearing a blue patterned shirt, with green foliage in the background

About Allan

Allan was born in Perth, Scotland, and now lives near Edinburgh. His writing has won the Allen Wright Award and the Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award. With an MA from the University of Glasgow, he works as an arts journalist and editor, and is currently a freelance theatre critic and feature writer.

His short stories have been published in anthologies including Out There, The Best Gay Short Stories and New Writing Scotland, and broadcast on BBC Radio 4.

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Upcoming Events

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  • 7:30pm

    The Borrowed Room – Play and Post-show Conversation 

    Pride House Events Room, Glasgow

    Festival Appearance

    I'm delighted to be appearing on a panel as part of this intimate theatre and literature event, presented as part of Pride House Glasgow 2026 in partnership with LEAP Sports Scotland.

    Unfolding in real time, The Borrowed Room explores masculinity, memory, belonging and the pressures of growing up in a small place. As old stories resurface, humour and shared history give way to questions of shame, silence and accountability. Informed by wider lived experience of difference in rural Scotland, the play asks what happens when one person returns to confront a past another believed had long since passed.

    Written by Dr Steven Maxwell and directed by Dr Edgar Rodriguez-Dorans, each performance of the show is followed by a 40-minute post-show conversation with leading Scottish writers, exploring the themes of the play alongside wider discussions of queer Scottish literature: masculinity, memory, identity and belonging. I'm appearing on Saturday 1 August.

    The evening also features a curated LGBTQ+ literature table in partnership with Lavender Menace Queer Books Archive, showcasing contemporary Scottish LGBTQ+ writing. The £19 Literature Ticket includes entry and a choice of one book from the curated table: Trumpet by Jackie Kay, Muckle Flugga by Michael Pedersen, The Old Haunts by Allan Radcliffe, Maggie & Me by Damian Barr, or Before We Hit the Ground by Selali Fiamanya.

    Friday 31 July and Saturday 1 August, 7.30pm–9.00pm, at Pride House Events Room, The Boardwalk, 105 Brunswick Street, Glasgow G1 1TF.

    Performance: Approximately 50 minutes
    Post-show conversation: Approximately 40 minutes

    Only 25 public tickets are available for each performance.

    This is a not-for-profit event. Ticket income supports fair pay for the actors. All surplus income will be donated to Waverley Care, Scotland’s HIV and hepatitis C charity, which supports people affected by these conditions.

    Age guidance: 16+

    Contains strong language and emotionally intense themes including homophobia, bullying, religious shame, emotional harm, and difficult family and community experiences. Ticket link is below.

    https://www.tickettailor.com/events/softladshardplaces/2306617

    INFO/TICKETS for The Borrowed Room – Play and Post-show Conversation

Books

The Old Haunts book cover Blurred Faces book cover

Allan Radcliffe is the author of Blurred Faces and The Old Haunts, both published by Fairlight Books. The Old Haunts was shortlisted for the McKitterick Prize 2024 and for the First Book Award at Scotland’s National Book Awards 2024, and was a BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime.

Explore Books

  • The Old Haunts

    A rippling, multifaceted jewel of a novel – elegant and unshowy, it dazzles with a distinct and irresistible inner luminosity. Poignant and compelling, it is resonant with vivid images. The writing flows, emotive and understated, with an enigmatic and impressive momentum. A stunning, indelible debut.

    — Kevin MacNeil, Author of The Brilliant & Forever

  • The Old Haunts

    Allan Radcliffe’s debut touched my heart with its quiet, intimate look at grief, love, family and romantic relationships, told with masterful spare prose. It is both insightful and observant, warm and infinitely relatable. I will be thinking of Jamie and his story for a long time.

    — Henry Fry, Author of First Time for Everything

  • The Old Haunts

    Equally heart-warming and sorrowful. Each and every sentence has been so elegantly penned

    — The Scots Magazine

  • The Old Haunts

    Written with an honesty and understanding that is rare, it's a novel full of love, kindness, and compassion.

    — The Skinny

  • The Old Haunts

    This poignant Bildungsroman is at once a tender tale of queer awakening in the Edinburgh of the 80s and 90s and a heartbreaking love letter

    — Mary Paulson-Ellis, author of The Other Mrs Walker

  • The Old Haunts

    I fell in love with Allan Radcliffe's The Old Haunts... So gentle, so warm, so human

    — Rick O'Shea

  • The Old Haunts

    There is much to admire in this debut novel, from the elegance and economy of the writing to the understanding of the emotional difficulties faced by its young protagonist

    — The Scotsman

  • The Old Haunts

    There is love, care, and kindness here, not only for his characters, but for readers as well.

    — Snackmag

  • The Old Haunts

    Allan Radcliffe’s debut novel, The Old Haunts, is a moving exploration of how regret, mourning, self-discovery, and muted hope can shape one’s life.

    — Domenico Di Rosa, The Bottle Imp

  • The Old Haunts

    A wonderfully understated and evocative novel about grief and love

    — Books From Scotland

  • Blurred Faces

    Exquisite… tender and romantic and yet searing with gritty reality.

    — The Sunday Post

  • Blurred Faces

    A story of love and remembrance… evoked in rich imagery.

    — Edinburgh Evening News

  • Blurred Faces

    An emotionally resonant tale of family dynamics and complex, fragile intimacies.

    — Scotland on Sunday

  • Blurred Faces

    I was quietly moved by Allan Radcliffe’s thoughtful, lovely story, steeped in vodka, bog-smell, and aging rain, about these wounded characters who tiptoe toward one another and risk the terrifying possibility of an un-haunted life. I want to believe they can do it.

    — Jeanne Thornton, author of A/S/L and Summer Fun

  • Blurred Faces

    Allan Radcliffe’s sophomore effort is an intimate tale of two souls attempting to find themselves, as well as each other. Character-driven yet cinematic, Blurred Faces is tenderly romantic and achingly poignant with a sharp complexity in what could be a spare story. The prose has a breathlessness, like the characters are anticipating a fall. Buffeted by their families as well as the choices they’ve made on their own, in the end, the two lovers discover that maybe they’re not broken; maybe they’re just bruised.

    — Harker Jones, author of Until September

  • Blurred Faces

    Gentle, anguished, warm, real and wonderful

    — Rick O'Shea, Irish Independent

  • Blurred Faces

    An impressive, Edinburgh-set novel ... Radcliffe has such mastery of his characters

    — David Robinson, The Scotsman

  • Blurred Faces

    Radcliffe writes with an enviably economical and engaging style […] Blurred Faces is probably the most clearly Edinburgh-focussed novel I have read for a long time.

    — Books From Scotland

Recent Media

From Short Works to interviews, browse a selection of recent media from Allan.