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Andrew O’Hagan may be a Scottish writer, but he’s lived in London for 35 years — and it’s the setting for his latest novel, Caledonian Road.

“It’s a place that fascinates,” O’Hagan tells 774 ABC Melbourne’s Raf Epstein.

“It also repulses me, as it must do anybody who’s interested in human equality. All the big cities in Europe and maybe across the world can demonstrate that huge, horrible division between the haves and have nots, but nowhere can do it like London can.”

Caledonian Road — a major road running through north London — exemplifies this inequality. On one side of the street are £8 million “wedding cake houses”, while on the other side is social housing.

“They live an entirely separate life — and that for a novelist is manna from the gods. You want to get in among that drama from the inside,” O’Hagan says.

By the sounds of it, researching the novel was a wild ride.

“I spent 10 years getting to know these people from different walks of lives — dukes, duchesses … and then street gangs and Russian oligarchs, guys spending tens of thousands of quid on bottles of wine.”