Book Festival Round-up 26.8

Hullo and welcome to the Book Festival Notebook. For the last four years I’ve headed over to Charlotte Square in the fashionable West End of town and always been met by the soggy square with its wind-swept tents and huge book tent, a sort of Hay-on-Wye in a city, the ultimate bookshop. All proceeds from books and tickets go back into the Festival to attract some high calibre names, and all this away from the hubbity-bub of the Fringe and the International Festival. I was sitting in the press tent, staffed by Frances and Charlotte (Francharlotte?) the other day, chatting to some photographers, and it hit me that this was a brilliant way to exist: meet some famous folk, hear said folk speak about their field in an interesting, invigorating manner, and get some contacts in the publishing and journalistic world.

Last week I had the privilege of meeting Laura Barton and John Harris, both of whom write for a leading left-leaning liberal newspaper rhyming with ‘Hard Euan’. I caught up with them both and had a natter with them, so check the site in the next few days for that. In the meantime I point you towards my write-up of Laura’s reading with Raphael Selbourne, whose book Beauty is out now, and will ask you to look out for John’s Foundation Lecture slideshow about rock’n’roll in which he revealed the sobriety of Keith Richards, formerly the only man for whom drugs were beneficial (“before 1974, when Mick took over”), that Reel 2 Real ft The Mad Stuntman’s I Like to Move It is on par with Little Richard, I Wanna Hold Your Hand and Chuck Berry, that Bono and The Edge are both menaces to the rock world and how music constantly fights against fame, drugs, pretentiousness and its own success. A scholarly approach to a subject still in development but which is part of music history, it was a joy to hear and the select few in the audience all lapped it up.

Elsewhere at the festival, David Shenk argued that genius is not innate – in fact, he wanted to ban the very word – but works with the environmental factors of nurture and adaptation. The Genius in us All is his new book, and I was struck by the literary tone he tried to convery. Tom Wolfe once told him that writing is a voyage of discovery and, ipso facto mutatis mutandi vice versa, the journey of a human is very similar, finding out what one’s genetics can do and how it can do it. The lady beside me works in the arts in East Lothian and I told her to teach this to her kids. Professor Shenk is at the top of his field and he kept his audience entertained for half an hour with his meticulous research and revelation that it took him a year to write one of the chapters. Someone who also took a long time to write a book – in this case his diaries – was the former Labour MP Chris Mullin, and he told a great story about George Bush (“a step backwards for mankind”) waving at him on a visit to Blair. Amused, Mullin asked Blair why Bush had waved and Tony, ever humorous, told him straight-faced that “you were one of his biggest fans”. With Blair’s memoirs out in September, it remains to be seen whether he comes out of it well. From his talk, focussing on his 1979 novel A Very British Coup, Mullin recounted how he narrowly beat a renowned journalist to the idea of a left-led struggle to oust the Tory party from power, backed by the Americans. Amusingly it was out of print in America for a long time, leading to its cult reputation and subsequent TV version. Mullin was also a journalist himself, with the BBC, and had some inside tales from his time there. A delightful wit and raconteur, with the old-school RP speaking voice, this was too fast an hour.

Another quick hour came from Pat Hennessey, an old Etonian and Oxfordian who entered combat in Afghanistan and Iraq and told the tale in his book The Junior Officers’ Reading Club. Coming across as a normal bloke, he told how the best review was of a colleague who said that Pat had expressed all his own feelings about war that he was unable to do. There is a place still for the educated soldier, and it remains a travesty that so much has gone wrong in the Afghan conflict. Nonetheless Pat is now at the Bar, so a career fighting for justice for troops and war victims is in the offing. A hero of sorts, though he won’t want to be told so.

From soldiers of the sword to those of the pen, and two morning talks from two of Britain’s finest joatmoa (Jacks of all trades…). The scriptwriter/ playwright/ novelist Hanif Kureishi has bound three sets of short stories together and was plugging this in his inimitable way. The microphone even exploded halfway through such was the puissance of his talk, in which he read an absorbing short story about a young lad going to, shall we say, play, a woman with hilarious yet serious consequences. He teaches writing, but is at pains to point out that one can never teach how to make a living out of it, humorously noting that his heroes (Kafka, Kerouac) didn’t have to send three kids to private school, nor did they have a posh Hammersmith house to keep. Engaging and clever, Kureishi deserves all plaudits heaped upon him, and I left twenty pounds lighter and my bag two books heavier. His advice for all budding playwrights? Focus on the story. Naomi Alderman has her sophomore book The Lessons out now, about what can go wrong when at Oxford University; she also writes video game narratives and a Guardian column thereof. Reading out three passages and leaving apt cliffhangers, her voice suits the Woman’s Hour timeslot, and the audience even allowed her a five-minute digression on why women are slowly getting the hang of video games, and the manufacturers are not just bringing out tokenistic gown-and-cake-making sorts. A true talent worth following, and another twelve pounds gone from my wallet.

Today I’m meeting a chap who writes about sport and Africa, tomorrow a chap who does the same about language and then on Saturday an economist, a National Treasure and a journalist. Reports will follow.