Fully booked

Published on Friday 1 January 2010 21:59

IT CAN sometimes seem as if there are two James Naughties. On one hand, there's the political Naughtie, long-term commentator on British-American relations, the man who first revealed the depth of the Blair-Brown feud in his study The Rivals, and, as presenter of the BBC's Today programme, an interviewer alert to every evasion and slippery contortion of highly spun MPs.

On the other, there's the man of letters Jim, a stalwart of book festivals from Edinburgh to Richmond, the author of an acclaimed study on the progress of music, chairman of last year's Man Booker Prize and the presenter of the long-running Radio 4 series Book Club.

Although he describes himself as "devoted to being a reporter", his cultural activities aren't "tacked on". "It was never intended to be a deliberate contrast", he says, while taking a break on his Alpine holiday and ruing the lack of snow compared with back in his native Scotland. "No, it's like driving into the pit-stop during the Grand Prix for a dose of sanity. A chance to refuel. I'd hate to think of myself, in radio terms, as one-dimensional. I tell myself I'm rounded; I suppose others might say I'm lucky to have more than one string to my bow."

There is, nevertheless, a very political (with a small "p") dimension to Naughtie's literary work. Book Club has been running monthly, without interruption, since 1997, and he's clearly proud that they've featured "most of the best living authors, a very good representation of the new generation and a good international selection" – the next tranche of programmes feature the Turkish Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk, the best-selling Swedish crime writer Henning Mankell and the American novelist Siri Hustvedt. But what he loves is the "subterranean quality" of book groups: "People are always sidling up to me and nudging me in what I assume is a Masonic way and saying, 'I'm in one of those you know'."

The American writer Toni Morrison, when she appeared on the show, thanked him afterwards for reconnecting her to a liberating 18th-century tradition where black women would pass round books and discuss them in secret. He relishes the "quietly subversive quality" of the "unseen network" of readers.

The programme is recorded with never more than two dozen participants, so that "instantly you're in a discussion. They're not an audience, like at a book festival, and the authors love it because they get really interesting questions, not pompous lit-crit questions full of jargon or daft-laddie questions about whether they use a pen or pencil. It's all about the primacy of the reader, the empowerment of the reader".

That Book Club has outlived more glitzy, less cerebral rivals, such as Richard & Judy's Book Group, he puts down to "not being part of the PR circuit. Our authors aren't doing the rounds; not that there's anything wrong with that, authors have to sell books, but I think we bring people in in a different way".

There have only been a few incidences where the "desperately simple" format hasn't delivered. Usually, he says, "an honest author feels they owe the reader an honest answer", and because they're not harnessed to a publicity schedule they can sometimes look at classic books, or less well-known books by well-known writers. The results can be revealing: Susan Hill discovered that "a bit of the plot didn't work" in her 1973 novel In The Springtime Of The Year. But the overall impact is more substantial, if less tangible.

He was, he says, recently speaking to William Hague, who appeared on the programme to discuss his biography of the prime minister William Pitt the Younger. "Hague said that he'd never done a broadcast before which led to more people coming up to him in the street to say that was interesting. Even including insults after Question Time." It confirms for Naughtie that part of the BBC Radio 4 programme's success is because "there aren't any concessions".

Naughtie has just interviewed a long-time favourite, Alexander McCall Smith, for the programme, talking about his first 44 Scotland Street novel – originally serialised in The Scotsman. The broadcaster is eloquent in defence of McCall Smith against any charge of being twee. "He has a Dickensian longing for a better-ordered world. His books are instantly appealing because you know it's true – not conventional or comforting. He's a master at pricking away at foibles without ripping out the entrails. It's no coincidence he's a devotee of the novels of Barbara Pym. Like her, he gives exquisite dissections of apparently simple human relationships and social niceties, while understanding why these artifices are there".

Naughtie confesses to "falling off his seat laughing", particularly at a joke about the South Edinburgh Conservative Association Ball raffle, and at the "deep humanity for the absurdity of the life we lead". Naughtie reminisces about an incident when he worked for The Scotsman and persuaded the editor to let him cover the 1978 World Cup. His flight to Buenos Aries had two distinct groups on board. One was a group of South American nuns whose pilgrimage (so far, he chuckles, with that raised-eyebrow tone in his voice) had been a great success. The other was the winner of the McEwan's Export Fly to Argentina Competition.

His time at The Scotsman was one of the happiest professional times of his life. As political editor in the late 1970s and early 1980s, he felt privileged to cover the first devolution bill, the collapse of the Labour Party, the rise of Thatcherism and the emergence of the "third party". "To be a young reporter then! How lucky can you get?" As regards the forthcoming election, he thinks, "It should be a classic. It's a great story whatever happens. It could be the end of the New Labour era, or an unexpected muddle, or an extraordinary reversal."

His only worry, as a journalist, stems from covering the Obama presidential campaign. "The debates dominated the campaign, and they now will in the UK elections. And then there's blogging, the whole internet angle. It's changed the way politics works, and you can't complain about it. That would be like trying to change the weather." But for newspapers and broadcasting, it's a new challenge: "How do we preserve the human texture of elections? Journalism isn't the latest opinion polls, or who didn't make a gaffe in the debate. It's not even telling people what they didn't know and didn't know they wanted to know. It's representing things in full colour rather than black and white, having a full canvas not a few brushstrokes."

Whatever happens, speculation is rife about the future of the BBC. Naughtie is a stoic combination of sanguinity and idealism. "There are always concerns about the future of the BBC. We have to be vigilant about our own standards, and about those who wish us ill. There are always questions about public funding" – he emphasises "not state funding. But this was the same 50 years ago, and we have to make the arguments, anew and better, for each generation. I have no doubt about the passion of the people making those arguments. The BBC needs to be accountable, well-run, and some people should be paid less".

It would be a "national catastrophe", he insists, "if the BBC were condemned to a niche. The danger is that the BBC only makes programmes that no-one else wants to." He muses on how so many non-British people are almost disbelieving about the attacks on the corporation, and – with the acoustic equivalent of a hard stare – says "more of us should realise that it's a fundamental part of who we are. But a bad BBC wouldn't deserve support".

He describes his duties on the Booker Prize jury this year as "a marathon", made lovely – an oddly frequent Naughtie word when he's discussing books – by the other judges and by the incredibly strong field of contenders. William Trevor not making the short-list rankles a little, but the fact that the winner, Hilary Mantel's 600-page epic on the life of Sir Thomas Cromwell, Wolf Hall, has sold incredibly well delights him. Even before the Christmas sales rush made it the best-selling Booker winner, he "was absolutely convinced we had the right one, no doubt whatsoever"; another indication that we underestimate readers at our peril. That said, the final judgment went right down to the hours before the ceremony.

That the novel Naughtie announced as the winner is an astute, complex navigation of the cross-currents and intrigues of Tudor government confirms just how interlinked the worlds of culture and politics are him.

&#149 Alexander McCall Smith is on James Naughtie's Book Club tomorrow at 4pm.