Hard as it is to believe, I know, but Edinburgh isn’t the only place for culture this week. The Edinburgh International Book Festival may already be sucking up authors like a Dyson in a dust storm, but travel south to Traquair House next weekend and you can catch the likes of Blake Morrison, Kate Adie, and some woman called Nicola at the Beyond Borders International Festival of Literature & Thought.
Which Nicola? Oh, that Nicola. The Nicola who just happens to be the country’s First Minister. Next Saturday offers an audience with Nicola Sturgeon discussing her hopes for the future for Scotland and the UK (presumably she will be hoping that only one of those two political entitities has a future).
She’s not the only politician mooching about Traquair House next week. Scottish Conservatives leader Ruth Davidson – herself a former journalist – will be talking to Adie and Allan Little about reporting on conflict. And Lord Jack McConnell – who was himself once First Minister as those of you with the kind of elephantine memory to recall when the Labour party actually won elections – will be in attendance to talk about life and work.
It was Thomas Mann who said that “everything is politics”. How might not be immediately apparent if you go on a foraging walk with Fi Houston and Fiona Bird, author of Kids' Kitchen, The Forager's Kitchen and Seaweed in the Kitchen next Saturday morning. But then food provision is a result of economic and political decisions, so why not?
And the fact is Beyond Borders has always embraced a political dimension. The organisation sees itself and the festival it runs as – and I quote – “a platform within Scotland, to break down borders between peoples, and help facilitate wider international cultural exchange, dialogue and reconciliation”. In recent years it has hosted discussions on the Arab Spring, the state of the union, the conflict between Ukraine and Russia and Israeli-Palestinian relations. Among those who have visited are James Naughtie, comedian Mark Thomas, General Sir Mike Jackson, as well as many and various British politicians.
And all of this takes place in a house that has been inhabited for the last 900 years, that has been a hunting lodge for Scotland’s monarchy. a defence tower against English occupation, and today serves as a venue for art fairs, weddings, plays and the festival of course. And as handsome and welcoming as the Edinburgh International Book Festival’s Spiegeltent may well be, it does pale a little in comparison. All that and Beyond Borders is getting the First Minister before the book festival in Edinburgh. I think that qualifies as bragging rights.
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