One's air of anticipation became excited assimilation on entering the tented garden of Charlotte Square for this year's Edinburgh Book Festival. New director Faith Liddell had put together a programme focused on bringing international writers/ideas to post-Devolution Scotland. She has succeeded admirably.
As in previous years I enrolled my neighbour's daughters, Emma and Megan. Theirs was a roving brief. The result is the most comprehensive coverage of the Festival by a "foreign" newspaper. Ninety-two events were covered over seventeen days.
The opening event had a familiar theme: "Writers and Politics". This one was different. A satiric piece on media sensationalism by Ivan Klima (Czech Republic) led David Grossman (Israel) and Allan Massie (Scotland) into an intriguing discussion on pragmatism in creativity. Facts fictionalised: are they distorted or merely altered? In their lectures, William MacIllvanney, Fay Weldon and Ben Okri, in varied ways, continued the momentum of this stimulating start. It culminated with Gitta Sereny talking of contrition, guilt and complicity with evil, as dealt with in Cries Unheard, her book concerning Mary Bell, an eleven-year-old killer. "Books are written so we can think together," she said. Chaired, in a far from uncritical but restrained way, by Magnus Linklater, this was a mind-enhancing, enlarging, questioning session.
Of course, there were diversions. One started each morning in the Speigeltent with the beguilingly titled "Scottish Writers for Breakfast". Yum, yum. Another morning saw Alaister Gray wishing he "was still at home writing fiction". Later Luc Sante, unsolicited, declared]The Irish Times to be "one of the great papers of the world". Much later, discussion centred on whether literary agent Giles Gordon was distilled or decanted from the Society of Authors lunch he had earlier attended and slowly, very slowly, described. Irony of Festival was Allan Massie commenting that "some very intelligent re viewers missed the point entirely" of his latest novel. Israeli Ambassador Mosha Raviv departed from a prepared script to stress the "need for a monument to the Holocaust, this century, in Berlin".
Ian Rankin, surveying another morning audience, read a new short story featuring Professor Gates, the pathologist in his Inspector Rebus novels. Listening carefully was the manager of the nearby Oxford Bar, John Gates. Alan Sillitoe opened with a greeting in morse code. Janice Galloway, not for the first time, made me wonder if misandry will ever be considered as objectionable as misogyny.
There was a rich and varied American presence. Edmund White, maybe mistakenly located in the Gay and Lesbian slot, was grace personified. Joyce Carol Oates, after a testy reading from her new novel, Man Crazy, spoke eloquently of judgmental conclusions on emotional traumas. Poet Lucien Stryk articulated Zen.
Poorly attended, but bravely planned, was the regular afternoon Bigger Picture slot. Adeline Yen Mah (China), Oonya Kempadoo (Caribbean based), Jean Rouad (France), Per Petterson (Norway) and Vikram Chandra (India) gave the international perspective essential for such events. Personal highlight was an opportunity to hear the great Portuguese novelist Mario de Carvalho read from, and discuss the complexities within, his prize-winning novel A God Strolling in the Cool of Evening.
Irvine Welsh ("Edgar Allan Poe with the lid off"), Alan Spence, Iain Banks, Christopher Whyte, Kenneth White, Edwin Morgan and the unjustly ignored novelist Robin Jenkins were the prominent Scottish presences.
The Irish contingency saw Owen Dudley Edwards mangle Ronan Bennett's name, debut novelist Lana Citron and Ardal O'Hanlot attract new audiences, Victoria Glendinning speak of Swift, Jennifer Johnston call the same Owen D.E. and "old cod" before going on with Bernard MacLaverty in a reading of poignant heart-tugging sadness in the wake of Omagh. Joan Lingard also referred to that blasphemy in a moving and redemptive reading from her first Belfast-based novel in twenty years, Dark Shadows.
There were professional appearances from Melvyn Bragg, speaking on science, Fay Weldon on reforming feminism and William McIlvanney on the dangers of elitist nationalism. Poets Brian Patten and Roger McGough met a new generation of deserved admirers.
This was a joy of a Festival. As International/Film/Jazz and Fringe squabble about dates and programming next year, Ms Liddell confirmed that August in Charlotte Square is a fixed star in the Festival firmament. Keep the Faith, I say.