Watching Me Watching Them Watching You 
Andrew O’Hagan
I spent the first of my teenage years living in the grounds of an approved school, a place that faced onto a ruined castle said to have given a night’s shelter to Mary Queen of Scots. The escaping Queen was never there at all, but people preferred to think she had never left: every castle in Scotland seeks to have its part in Mary’s story, and her eyes were felt to burn through the night from a high window. Looking at the ruins, I always hoped that Mary would just speak some of her great last words from the darkness; I believed she was there and that something of us all was there in those eyes of hers that seemed to make a ritual of watching.
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Andrew O’Hagan’s The Atlantic Ocean, a collection of essays on Britain and America, will be published in June. Be Near Me, his last novel, has been shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
Other articles by this contributor:
The Nominee · With the Democrats
Disgrace under Pressure · Andrew O’Hagan reads some lad mags
The God Squad · Andrew O’Hagan in Bushland
Cartwheels over Broken Glass · worshipping Morrissey
In His Hot Head · Robert Louis Stevenson
Iraq, 2 May 2005 · Two Soldiers
A Journey in the South · Andrew O’Hagan travels to New Orleans
Still Reeling from My Loss · Lulu & Co
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