Douglas Stuart – love and grit drove him on

Douglas Stuart, a reluctant fashion designer, has won the Booker Prize with ‘Shuggie Bain’, an autobiographical novel, about the lonely gay son of an alcoholic mother in 1980s Glasgow. Described as ‘heartbreaking’ ‘both beautiful and brutal’ it fictionalises Stuart’s love for his mother despite her flaws and his determination to survive and thrive in a homophobic early environment.  Born 31 May 1976 (wiki), in a housing estate in Glasgow, his father