Edinburgh Book Festival round-up: James Crawford | Jenni Fagan | Blindboy Boatclub

The incoming Book Festival board chairman took audiences on a tour of Scottish landmarks reclaimed by the wild, while Jenni Fagan received a standing ovation for the strength she has shown writing her harrowing memoir, and Irish comedian Blindboy Boatclub talked literary inspiration – and brown sauce

Blindboy Boatclub | Contributed

Writer and broadcaster James Crawford was named in July as the new chairman of the Book Festival board, replacing Allan Little. However, on Thursday he was at the festival in his role as an author, talking about his new book, Wild History - Journeys Into Lost Scotland.

The inspiration for the book came from the archive of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS), set up in 1908 to identity sites which might be considered “monuments” and protect them. Its first secretary, Alexander Curle, set about the task on his bicycle, and listed hundreds of historic sites, many of them completely unknown.

Crawford’s intention was to go off the beaten track, away from places managed as tourist attractions to find those which get very few visitors but are still visible to those who seek them out, from the Roman site (thought by Curle to be a signal station) on Ruberslaw in the Borders to the shrine to the Celtic goddess Cailleach in Glen Lyon.

There is no wilderness left in Scotland, he said, but there are sites which have been “rewilded”, traces of history with no explanatory signage or visitor facilities, from the lost football ground which hosted the first ever Scottish Cup Final to the 2500-year-old Cracknie Souterrain in the wilds of Sutherland. The point, he said, was not to start a trend for visiting these places but to encourage people to arm themselves with their imaginations and explore the sites in their own locale.

Cheers greeted Jenni Fagan as she arrived on stage at the Book Festival to launch her much-anticipated memoir, Ootlin, which tells the harrowing story of her upbringing in the care system. She brought with her two immense piles of paperwork, her social work files, obtained through Freedom of Information requests, which contain the history of her childhood.

Fagan wrote the first version of her memoir when she was 23 and struggling with what she now recognises as CPTSD. Having written it, she locked it in a suitcase and vowed never to return to it. The decision to write Ootlin came after “bargaining with God” when she was dangerously ill with covid-19 in 2020. Once recovered, she wanted to backtrack, and described writing the memoir as “the hardest thing I will ever do”.

What came across most, though, was her strength, tenacity and drive. Not only did she survive those experiences, she went to university in her twenties, achieved a degree, Masters and PhD, and has become a hugely acclaimed literary writer. She said she has come to see her unique story as a “gift” which can help others in a similar position, and writing it with them in mind has allowed her a new perspective on it. At the end of the event, the audience rose in a standing ovation.

I must be in the wrong demographic as I had no idea of the phenomenon that is Blindboy Boatclub. The Irish comedian, writer and podcast host arrived on the Book Festival stage with his trademark plastic bag wrapped around his head, vaping and carrying a box of beers. Ostensibly, he was here to talk about his third volume of short stories, Topographia Hibernica, but he spent a significant chunk of time shooting the breeze with host Michael Pedersen about the qualities of brown sauce.

When he did get round to talking about writing, he did so with trademark honesty and perceptiveness. “Why should what I write be linked to my self-esteem?” he pondered, describing a review he received which was so bad it gave him writer’s block for a year. Ultimately, this inspired him to “up his game” and study Hemingway and Joyce to improve his writing. His best-loved role model is Flann O’Brien, whom he described as “the reason I write” and “the person who showed that surrealism and comedy can be art”.