On the very few occasions when the sun actually shone on Charlotte Square, the mephitic, stagnant pools seemed to threaten an outbreak of malaria. The monsoon conditions haven't impacted on audience numbers, with even the more esoteric events (Stefan
Collini on reviewing, the wonderful poets Donny O'Rourke and Jen Hadfield, the European intellectual heavyweight George Steiner on his unwritten books) all playing to sell-out crowds.
Actually, you don't even need to attend the events to feel your brain getting bigger. Sitting with Ian Rankin outside the authors' yurt, I learned from Pru Rowlandson that Mongolians find the word 'yurt' very offensive: it's the Russian equivalent of their word 'ger', so has colonial connotations. It would be a bit like calling all the charming Book Festival staff punkah-wallahs. Rankin dashed off to get his copy of Arkham Asylum autographed by comics illustrator Dave McKean.
Let's call it the Dawkins delusion Susan Greenfield's lecture on neuroscience and the impact of technology was a cerebral roller-coaster. During questions afterwards, one brave soul asked what she thought of Richard Dawkins. "To copy the Taliban," she thundered, "is not a very scientific thing to do". I wonder if the God Delusion author will deliver a fatwa on Ms Greenfield, above.
Pope Guilty the First unmasked Some events really don't turn out as expected. With Kate Mosse, right, on the bill, I felt slightly sorry for the husband and wife novel-writing team Rita Monaldi and Francesco Sorti. But the audience seemed far more interested in their book – given Sorti had been discussing how it was in essence censored by the Vatican, that's maybe not surprising. Monaldi and Sorti had discovered that Pope Innocent XI secretly financed the Protestant 'Glorious Revolution', which was a bit of an embarrassment since he was being fast-tracked as the Anti-Islam
Papal Saint. New revelations
are due in their next book,
Secretum: over dinner they told me that they think the signature of Carlos II on his will was forged…
I could be so lucky, says Salmond Alex Salmond's Donald Dewar lecture was a mixture of statesman-like announcements of economic initiatives and roguish charm: a sort of policy wonk and knowing wink affair. Asked which of the three Labour leadership candidates he feared the most, he beamed about his sleeplessness over all three, then added it was really the Liberals who had him worried. He didn't take up the opportunity to predict another
by-election earthquake, but did quote Gary Player: "The more I practise, the luckier I get – and we're practising very hard indeed."
More politicians, but this time in the audience. David McLetchie and Andy Kerr were both at the Terry Pratchett event which I chaired. What is the connection, I wonder, between the worlds of fantasy and Scottish politics?
Publishing debut The Book Festival has branched into publishing this year, with a fantastic little anthology of new work by AL Kennedy, Janice Galloway, Don Paterson and John Burnside, Lights Off The Quay. After Kennedy's sublimely bleak account of a failing marriage, Galloway launched into her blistering portrayal of a loveless relationship. "There's no future for heterosexuality in this country," she quipped.
All-licensed Bell Ancient kings had their fools, and Edinburgh audiences have Martin Bell, the former MP and now licensed grumbler. In his talk he attacked the Speaker, Princes William and Harry, the Georgians ("not the most responsible people on earth"), Keith Vaz, the Hamiltons (get over it!) and Tony Blair, all to the delighted titters of the Morningside Mafia.
The warp and woof of spin
Far better, ideas-wise, was the event on Spin and the Media with William Dinan, Adrian Monck (both right) and David Miller, which dealt with propaganda, investigative journalism, the history of PR and viral marketing. It was the kind of debate where the speakers not only talked, but believed, and argued, and disagreed – most notably when Miller praised the Paris Commune as the most enlightened attempt at democracy. An event on the dark arts of persuasion was my highlight of frank exchange.
Simon Hoggart gave a funny account of the life of the parliamentary sketch writer – but I can't help feeling he decided early on to derail BBC attempts at recording it. With the c-word twice in the first minutes, and a few effs to boot, I hope they have the bleeper in good working order.
BOOK FESTIVAL QUOTES'We have the censorship of the Party, you have the censorship of the market'
– Xiaolu Guo
'The man who cried on TV when he found out he was Scottish'
– Alex Salmond on Jeremy Paxman
"I wouldn't worry about the nature of Heaven if I were you"
– overheard during a Richard Holloway appearance
The full article contains 797 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
