Novels that dip into the lives of their characters every few years risk them seeming detached from the world or clumsily inserted into historical events. Drayton and Mackenzie, Alexander Starritt’s third novel about two mismatched friends, enters into their lives at intervals, and falls into neither of those traps.
The novel, in its deft and engaging way, follows James Drayton and Roland Mackenzie from their last days at Oxford in 2004 up to the 2020s. James is an ingenious undergraduate with a glaring lack of social nous, frustrated by life’s apparent inability to provide him with a real challenge. Roland is a gregarious, charmingly inept child of oil money. James finishes top of his class in PPE, Roland graduates with a 2:2. James alienates his high-flying colleagues at McKinsey’s management consultants; Roland teaches in India after a madcap trip to Japan to interview a yakuza.
A chance meeting in 2007 propels the pair on a business venture in tidal energy and hydrogen fuel for rockets. Starritt whips us through the 2008 financial crisis as the pair find their feet. We encounter the big topics of the century (the 2008 crash, Brexit, Trump) through Drayton and Mackenzie’s progress and there are engaging vignettes of the global elite including unexpected cameos from Peter Thiel, Mario Draghi and Elon Musk.
Starritt excels in imbuing their joint enterprise with a sense of adventure. Both are acrobats “at the high point of the leap from one trapeze to another”. Passages on global finance and mechanical design are told in great detail — rather too much detail, in fact — but the characters carry us with them.
Best summer reads of 2025
Explore a curated list of the best summer reads this year to pack on holiday or take to the park
- Real Americans by Rachel Khong
- Care and Feeding by Laurie Woolever
- Food Person by Adam Roberts
- Sunburn by Chloe Michelle Howarth
- Fair Play by Louise Hegarty
See more in Standard Shopping writer Saskia Kemsley’s guide to the best summer reads of 2025
The heart of the book is a thoughtful study of male friendship. Some of the best moments are provided by the snappy dialogue between James and Roland as they move from a fractious to symbiotic relationship. By the end, the reader has formed much the same attachment to them both — we see how they have changed and not changed, and how life, love and ambition can be both hollow and meaningful.
Alastair Lockhart is Newsdesk Editor at The London Standard
Drayton and Mackenzie by Alexander Starritt is out now (Swift Press, £13.99)
