‘For me,’ wrote James Baldwin in 1959, ‘the difficulty is to remain in touch with the private life. The private life, his own and that of others, is the writer’s subject – his key and ours to his achievement.’

Nicholas Boggs, author of the first major biography of James Baldwin in three decades, discusses with acclaimed writer Bernardine Evaristo the importance of love, friendship and intimacy to Baldwin’s life and art.

Drawing on newly uncovered archival material and original research and interviews, including unique recordings found at the British Library, Baldwin: A Love Story tells of the writer’s most sustaining intimate and artistic relationships: with his mentor, the Black American painter Beauford Delaney; with his lover and muse, the Swiss painter Lucien Happersberger; and with his collaborators, the famed Turkish actor Engin Cezzar and the iconoclastic French artist Yoran Cazac, whose long-overlooked significance as Baldwin’s last great love is explored for the first time.

Now widely acknowledged as one of the greatest American writers of the twentieth century, this conversation brings new light and a fresh perspective on James Baldwin, whose recent centenary year brought his pioneering novels and passionate, probing essays to a whole new generation of readers.