USHERED in by bright and enticing posters in the style of Penguin books, the 8th Inverness Book Festival was an exciting medley of writers from a huge range of genres. From Scottish historians, to popular crime writers and children’s novelists, the schedule suited a huge range of tastes.

Kicking off Wednesday evening’s events was former teacher and MSP Rob Gibson, whose latest book Highland Cowboys explores the history of the thousands of Scots who emigrated to America from the 18th century onwards. With them, they brought several centuries’ worth of farming knowledge, which Gibson claims laid the foundations of the American cattle culture mythologized on the silver screen.

It’s a specialist subject, and possibly the only time in my life in which I’ve heard such a question as ‘Can you tell me whether dogs were used in North America to herd sheep during the 19th century, as I’m particularly interested in the history of the Collie? ’ answered in an enthusiastic and in-depth manner.

John Byrne (photo johnbyrneart.com)

However, Gibson, clad in denim jeans and cowboy boots for the occasion, was a talented speaker, and held his meagre yet keen audience’s attention by proving that Cowboy culture was not merely forged by rugged, Clint Eastwood types, but by families who inhabited the very Glens that we live in now.

Taking on the theme of Scottish heritage from a rather different perspective was Brian Denoon. The local author was interviewed by Kit Fraser about his 2009 memoir Do You Say Sir to Your Father?, which documents Denoon’s life in Abriachan and Fort Augustus during the 1950s and 1960s. This event had particular appeal to those from the local area, who might have been familiar with some of the places and oddball characters who appear in Denoon’s tales. His self-deprecating, humorous style put me in mind of authors such as Flann O’Brian or Bill Bryson, who share Denoon’s talent for poking delicate fun at both themselves and the eras they grew up in with wit and insight.

While few members of the audience would be able to recall even the haziest of memories from the era of Denoon’s youth, he evokes this long-gone age with startling clarity. Besides, I was most struck by how much remains unchanged. His tales of caustic school masters, Lutheran ministers and snobbish land-owners can resonate easily into the present day, while the cultural diet of Denoon’s youth, consisting mainly of shinty and whisky, would not look out of place to local boys.

On Friday, Tom Renouf discussed his experiences in the Black Watch during the Second World War with Robert Taylor, editor of the Inverness Courier. While Renouf experienced more profound events during his military service than most do in an entire lifetime, he recounts his memories in a frank manner without a trace of self-pity. Perhaps the most fascinating of all his stories is his account of coming into possession of Himmler’s watch. This was traded for 300 cigarettes shortly after his regiment’s capture of the SS leader at the end of the war in May 1945. As he calmly announced that he had the watch of one of the most evil men in history in his pocket, it was as if a chill swept through the entire audience.

Most interestingly, Renouf is not a great believer in the counselling and rehabilitation programs that modern soldiers receive nowadays. In his words, he has ‘dealt with it by himself’, through his regular involvement in the Highland Division Veteran Association, and eventually, through the publication of his book Black Watch. Considering that many of us have grown up in families with parents and grand-parents who simply never spoke about the war, Renouf’s decision to share his experiences so publicly is a token of great courage.

Saturday’s events included former Nairn resident John Byrne coming to talk about his first foray into children’s writing. Pieced together from bedtime stories told to his children and filled with beautifully painted illustrations, Donald and Benoit: The Story of a Cat and a Boy, tells the adventures had by the two main protagonist’s in a small Scottish seaside town. While this is a book that every small person would be overjoyed to have in their possession, I was disappointed by the fact that it was publicised as a children’s event in the Inverness Book Festival pamphlet. My feelings were doubtless shared by the troupe of bored, fidgeting under fives who were evidently not enthralled by John Byrne and Bryan Beattie’s in depth dialogue on the creative process.

Another spoiler on the event was the inescapable fact that John Byrne is famous, which sadly led to one member of the audience attempting to lead the discussion into more unsavoury territory. Fortunately, Byrne soon put paid to this by sternly announcing that he was here to discuss ‘a children’s book, not some bloody gossip from Renfrew.’ Quite frankly, I’m surprised that this statement wasn’t met with applause. After all, wouldn’t it be refreshing if this attitude was taken with every artist’s work?

Christopher Brookmyre (photo Little, Brown, © Tricia Malley, Ross Gillespie)

The festival was rounded off by crime writer Christopher Brookmyre and former Faith Brothers front man Billy Franks. Brookmyre is a huge fan of Frank’s work, and often quotes his lyrics in his novels. Their set consisted of stories and songs that perfectly complemented each other by way of their wry wit and fluidity. The pair had an incredible chemistry which brought out the best in both their talents – over the course of the performance, Brookmyre’s stories kept getting funnier, while Franks’ playing became better and better.

It was a wonderful surprise to hear Brookmyre reveal a sweet and tentative tenor voice as a counterpart to Franks’ rich, bluesy vocals. While listening to Franks’ singing, it occurred to me how handsomely layered his voice has become from years of performing experience, like a lasagne made audible. I regret to admit, as I expect most of the audience would also have to, that I hadn’t actually heard of him before that night. Unfortunately for him, and the many people who deserve to hear his music, Franks is one of countless artists who has slipped through the net of a brutally fickle industry – he has appeared on every national music programme, but only once.

Brookmyre is his staunchest supporter, and his wish to get his friend’s music noticed has led to collaborations such as this. Crime fiction and acoustic guitar may not seem like the most obvious of pairings, but together, Brookmyre and Franks make it work incredibly well, and will hopefully inspire similar partnerships over a range of genres by doing so. Such a finish to a fantastic week is proof alone that the Inverness Book Festival is eclectic and imaginative enough to rival the best of them.

© Rowan Macfie, 2011

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NORTHINGS: Brid, this is your first festival as director, but you do have previous experience of the event from a different perspective, dont you?

Brid McKibben, the new Director of the Inverness Book Festival

BRID McKIBBEN:

I do. I worked in bookselling in Inverness until 2007, and I had been involved with the festival on that side from the first one until 2007. Ive watched it grow from the very start, and when Colin Marr approached me about taking over from Jason, I was very interested. I doubt I could have taken it on if I had still been in bookselling, though. 

I was just reading a piece on Northings that Jason did last year, funnily enough, and I noticed he was talking about how it was important to have fresh blood come in. He did a great job in the first five years, and I hope I can now take that on. I also have to agree with Jason that it is one of those part-time jobs that eat up a lot of time, and that is probably especially true this year when I have just been finding my feet. 

BRID McKIBBEN: I work for Community Energy Scotland in Dingwall, which like HI-Arts was under the wing of HIE for a long time, but is now an independent charity. My particular involvement is with the schools. 

NORTHINGS: Did you have an overall strategy in mind for this years event? 

BRID McKIBBEN: It was really to try to gear it to having at least one event which everyone would find interesting. I knew from my time in the shop the kind of subjects that sold well in Inverness, other than fiction. What does well here is history, biography, cooking, walking and the outdoors, and crime fiction. I wanted each of those sections represented in order to try to appeal to as wide an audience as possible. 

NORTHINGS: Crime fiction is an obvious hotspot, although during the book festival in Edinburgh this summer one of last years guests at the festival, James Kelman, had a bit of a go at genre fiction usurping serious literary fiction in Scotland. What did you make of that? 

BRID McKIBBEN: Yes, and this year we have one of the writers he was attacking, in Ian Rankin. I think there are arguments for both sides. There are a lot of people who are completely steeped in literary fiction, but there is a huge audience for crime fiction, and it is no less valid. We have to cater for both, and a lot of what might be regarded as genre fiction also crosses over into serious literary work. 

I wasnt an avid crime fiction reader myself, but what I find interesting about it is that it isnt just the crime story itself that carries the book, its all the details about a particular place and time that the writer works into the fabric of the book. That was where the idea of the Three Cities Crime Panel with Ian Rankin, Alex Gray and Stuart MacBride came up, and whether there might be one to come out of Inverness? 

NORTHINGS: Might literary fiction be seen as underrepresented in the programme this time? 

BRID McKIBBEN: Yes, possibly, but I prefer to see that as an increase in representation for other areas of writing! 

NORTHINGS: You mentioned walking and outdoor activities as another strong area of interest, which I guess we would expect here.

BRID McKIBBEN: Yes, it is a very popular subject, and John Allens book Cairngorm John has been nominated for the Boardman-Tasker Award this year. I think his session with Craig Weldon and John Davidson should be very interesting, and will represent quite different aspects of the outdoor community. We also have Brian Wilson, who is a Highland-based writer and environmentalist, and I guess you could almost include Robin Gillanders photographs in the outdoors category as well. 

NORTHINGS: Brian Wilson in particular also overlaps with the environmental strand, which is presumably close you to your own heart as well as a major issue here?

BRID McKIBBEN: There are so many groups in the area involved with issues around climate change, and it is a very strong interest here. Emma Wood has done a book on the history of the climate in this area, and Alastair Macintosh is a great campaigner and speaker, so theirs should a great session for anyone with an interest in climate change and the environment. 

Ian Rankin

NORTHINGS: You also have a number of well-know celebrities that arent primarily known as writers, like Barbara Dickson, Elaine C. Smith and Clare Grogan – are they included mainly for their public profile rather than literary merit? 

BRID McKIBBEN: Clare Grogan is in the childrens section, and both Barbara Dickson and Elaine C. Smith have a big following in Scotland. Biography is one of the big areas of interest in Inverness, and while I know a lot of people would say we have too much coverage of celebrities in general, but both of their books have very interesting stories to tell about their upbringing, and people are fascinated by that. 

NORTHINGS: Is the childrens programme an important element in what you are trying to achieve? 

BRID McKIBBEN: It is definitely a big part of what we are trying to do, especially the interactive part of it. Eden Court have done a lot of work through their education department on putting workshops together, and many of the events we have lined up have an interactive aspect to them, as in the frieze that the Itchy Coo Workshop will be making. Lari Don was new to me, but she has a fantastic ability to get the kids involved in story-telling. 

NORTHINGS: There is a bit of a story-telling theme running through the programme, in fact? 

BRID McKIBBEN: There is, for both adults and children, and Im hoping that it will reinvigorate the idea of storytelling and how important it is. It is a very strong tradition in this area, and I also come from a culture in Ireland where telling stories is very strong, and you are measured by how well you can tell one, and that interaction is crucial. 

We have also had a short story competition this year, and are going through the entries at the moment. We will be able to announce winners nearer to the festival. 

Sue Lawrence

NORTHINGS: So what does that leaves us with – history and cooking? 

BRID McKIBBEN: Im quite excited about the History events. Tim Newarks book on the Highland soldier is the first for a while on that topic, and he has had access to lots of material that hasnt been seen before. Again, there are lots of lovely little stories in there, and the same goes for Angus Konstams book on Scottish soldiers. 

We have Ian Hamilton, one of the people who was involved in stealing the Stone of Destiny from Westminster Abbey. He is an amazing character. And Roger Hutchinsons new book will be enthralling, I think. It is more of a personal book for him, about his own familys history. Cooking is always popular, and Im looking forward to hearing Sue Lawrence, who is trying to get people to revive lots of old Scottish recipes. 

NORTHINGS: How about the involvement of local writers? 

BRID McKIBBEN: I was very keen to have as much local involvement as possible, and I have asked a number of local writers to chair sessions or to run workshops for the festival, and have tried to match up writers and chair people. Some were obvious enough – Nicky Marr used to share a flat with Ian Rankin, for example.
 
The week of the festival takes in National Poetry Day on the Thursday, and there are lots of people in the area who write poetry. Tow Pow will be doing a session with Cynthia Rogerson in the Chair, and Anne MacLeod will be doing a Workshop on writing poetry, one of a range of workshops we are running. 

NORTHINGS: Is it fair to say that the book festival is still trying to find its full identity and place in the Eden Court set-up? 

BRID McKIBBEN: I think that has been the case, and we need the public to help us with that, not only by supporting events, but also by giving us lots of good feedback about what people want from next years festival, and how they would like to see it develop. 

NORTHINGS: Thanks, Brid. Good luck with the festival. 

The Inverness Book Festival runs from 5-10 October 2009 at various locations in Eden Court Theatre.  

John pointed in particular to the phrase “heavily soiled in broad Caithness dialect” as offensive, and deserving of “an apology to the people of Caithness”. I agree, as does the writer of the review (a Caithness native), who otherwise stands by his review.

The sense he meant to convey – and the wording was then changed to reflect it – was “rooted in the soil”, but the phrase as it stood bore a different interpretation, and should have been amended at the editorial stage.

I accept responsibility for allowing it to slip through, and am happy to offer an unreserved apology to anyone offended by its use. I also offered John Cairns the opportunity to expand on his assertion that “promotion of local dialect and culture is fundamental to our work as arts practitioners in the Highlands and Islands”, which he has done, although – as he admits – not quite to the brief I suggested.

An interesting exemplar of the point he makes about theatre being more than language is heading for Inverness this month as part of the Highland Homecoming event. Teatr Biuro Podrózy’s production of Macbeth – Who Is That Bloodied Man? more or less abandons the hallowed text in favour of imagery and action to tell their own visceral version of Shakespeare’s Scottish play.

It is one of the potential highlights of Highland Homecoming, which runs from 19-31 October at venues across the Highlands (although the event listings in their suitably fat programme brochure also includes events outside of that time frame). It is to be welcomed as a tangible presence for what has so far seemed a very nebulous event in these parts.

The big outdoor festivals have now pretty much run their course (although Teatr Biuro Podrózy will brave the weather in the car park at Eden Court), and the festival action moves indoors this month, with the Inverness Book Festival taking over various corners of Eden Court (see our interview with its new director, Brid McKibben), and the Royal National Mod returning to Oban.

Highland Print Studio made a welcome return to their elegantly refurbished premises in Bank Street this summer (they officially re-launched on 25 September), and Georgina Coburn caught up with director Alison McMenemy and Studio Manager John McNaught to hear all about it. HPS offer a variety of courses and facilities, and also welcome visitors simply curious to see what the business of print making is all about.

Kenny Mathieson
Commissioning Editor, Northings

Kenny Mathieson lives and works in Boat of Garten, Strathspey. He studied American and English Literature at the University of East Anglia, graduating with a BA (First Class) in 1978, and a PhD in 1983. He has been a freelance writer on various arts-related subjects since 1982, and contributes to the Inverness Courier, The Scotsman, The Herald, The List, and other publications. He has contributed to numerous reference books, and has written books on jazz and Celtic music.

JASON ROSE is standing down after five years at the helm of the Inverness Book Festival. We look back on his experiences in establishing the festival as an annual fixture in the calendar

THE INVERNESS Book Festival grew out of a chat between Jason Rose and Colin Marr, the director of Eden Court Theatre, in the summer of 2003. Both had been thinking about establishing such an event. The inaugural event took place at Eden Court Theatre in 2004, but the closure of the theatre for its refurbishment and subsequent delayed re-opening meant that a planned two-year removal to the Royal Highland Hotel (with occasional events in other venues) actually became three years.

The festival returns to Eden Court this year (30 Setember-3 October) with a varied programme which includes sessions with Glaswegian novelist James Kelman, record producer Joe Boyd, and broadcaster Lesley Riddoch delivering the second Neil Gunn Trust Lecture. It will be Jason Rose’s final festival as director, but as he explains, that was not a sudden decision.

NORTHINGS: Jason, why have you decided to stand down as director at this point?

JASON ROSE: After the second festival in 2005 I had the regular post-mortem with Colin, and we felt that it was shaping up to be an annual event. I was vaguely worried about being sucked into doing it forever, and I said at that point that I would do three more, and after that Colin could perhaps look to bringing in someone fresh. That was the gentleman’s agreement we had, and this is now the last of that three.

I think events like this always need a change of direction from time to time. It has always been my baby, if you like, and something I very much wanted to get underway – lots of people thought it was a good idea, but no one was doing anything about it. I feel it is in good shape, and whoever takes it on is starting from a good position.

N: I imagine it entailed a fair amount of work on top of your regular job as a press officer at Scottish Water?

JR: A lot of people do say that to me, and being a spin-doctor by trade I try to play it down a bit! I say oh, well, it’s an e-mail here and a phone call there, and so it is, but that all adds up, and at certain points in the year it takes over and I basically don’t have any spare time at all. Dealing with authors and publishers and all of the people involved in it can be a bit like herding cats, and things can also change at the last minute.

I have always tried to make things as simple as possible for the authors so that they are not having to negotiate things at the last minute. I spell out what I want them to do, when I want them to do it, where they need to be and what the terms are from the outset, and really all they have to do is show up at the right time and do it. I know from speaking to writers that it doesn’t always work that way elsewhere. I have tried always to create a professional way of doing things here, and if you do that the word gets around.

N: I was going to ask you what advice you would pass on to your successor when he or she is named, and I assume that one would be high on the list?

JR: Yes, definitely, that, and also don’t underestimate the amount of work involved. You have to be as diplomatic as possible as well. From time to time you get publishers trying to foist authors upon us that we know wouldn’t work in Inverness, and you have to try to be diplomatic in that situation. You have to keep a lot of different parties happy, and it can be hard going, but when it all comes together it is incredibly satisfying. Seeing a good reaction from the audience and hearing people talk about it afterwards makes it all worthwhile.

N: Book festivals have been a huge growth area since Edinburgh took off back in the 1990s – even in the Highlands we have just had festivals in Cromarty and Boat of Garten, and Ullapool and Nairn also have successful events. What do you see as the reasons for that popularity?

JR: It is an interesting one, because to some extent you think it wouldn’t work, wouldn’t you? Reading is generally a solitary pursuit, after all, so why assume people would be interested in getting together around an event about books? But it definitely works. Everyone has their book festival these days. For Inverness it is still a bit of a novelty. There was no culture of this kind of thing in the city before the festival. I remember when we were talking up the first festival I had to explain quite often to people what it actually was.

As to why it is growing, I think readers have realised they like to meet authors, and I think authors like to meet their readers, and also catch up with other authors. There will always be some writers who are not into any of that, but we encourage our authors to stay around for a day or two and meet other writers and so forth. It is a nice social experience, and I think the right atmosphere is very important for this kind of event. Ullapool is getting a good reputation for that as well, and I think if a festival can develop its own character, it will be a long-term success.

N: I suppose the corollary of that growth is that authors have had to develop a level of performing skills as well, and some are definitely better than others when it comes to that.

JR: I have heard stories from other festivals who have invited eminent authors who turn out to not to perform very well at all. It is something you have to be aware of in programming an event – is this person going to be entertaining as well as an interesting writer? You are looking for a bit of a performer if possible, and of course, it is also vital that they have something interesting to say.

N: How significant is the return to Eden Court?

JR: I think it is crucial. It was always the intended home for the festival, and we only had it for the first one until now. The Royal Highland Hotel filled the gap, and we were grateful to them, but it was difficult to create the right atmosphere with some of the events, and I think being out of Eden Court did affect audience numbers.

There is an established “package” there, where you can have a meal or a drink as well as the event, and we can make use of different spaces within the building for specific events, so it is much more flexible now, which should help to create the festival atmosphere we want.

N: What are your favourite memories from your four previous festivals?
JR: Gosh. There are lots. Louis de Bernières was very good, and so was A L Kennedy, who I had avoided asking for the first couple of festivals because I wasn’t sure how she would go down in Inverness. Then I learned she did stand up comedy and was very droll and funny. Joanna Blythman was another particular favourite of mine. I thought the issue of junk food and supermarkets was such a big issue, and very relevant in Inverness.

Cameron McLeish was another favourite event of mine – I’m an outdoor kind of guy, and his event was quite unusual. It was in Ness Bank Church, and there was music and images, all very atmospheric. And Don Paterson. I think for me the events that had a character all of their own are the ones that stand out.

N: Do you think you are going to miss it when you hand over the reins?

JR: I really don’t know – we’ll see. I think the festival has a bright future at Eden Court, and I’m definitely looking forward to just being in the audience next year without the stress of being responsible for it.

The Inverness Book Festival runs from 29 September until 3 October

© Kenny Mathieson, 2008

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Kenneth White

ACTIVE SINCE 1986 the Neil Gunn Trust has embarked upon a number of projects including the biannual Neil Gunn Writing Competition to expand the legacy of the celebrated Caithness writer. In the context of the Inverness Book Festival and Highland 2007 it was extremely appropriate for the Trust to select Kenneth White to deliver the first Neil Gunn Lecture.

Writer, poet and thinker Kenneth White gave a Geopoetic reading of Neil Gunn’s novel “Highland River” to mark the 70th anniversary of its publication. White’s credentials are impressive; a former Chair of 20th Century Poetics at the Sorbonne, visiting Professor at the UHI Millennium Institute and Honorary Member of the Royal Scottish Academy, he was awarded honorary doctorates from the Universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow and the Open University.

What is more impressive, however, is White’s ability to expand our intellectual geography and explore as Gunn did the source of our culture.

In his lecture “Into the High Land ­ The World of Neil Gunn”, White discussed the stance of the writer in terms of Nativism and Nationalism, and then traced the evolutionary stages of “Highland River” through “the communal scene”, the “sense of the land” and “the furthest ridge”.

These locations of shore, strath and moor are grounding for the protagonist and represent an “extension and expansion of being” as he journeys through them.  Both Gunn and White in their writings argue for Scottish Culture to be defined not by “vague emotionalism”, “local association” or “parochial observation”, but rather moving towards what Gunn described as “something ampler and finer”, “a real projection of homo sapiens”.

This desire to examine fully what it means to be human upon the earth is expressed as Gunn’s character Kenn moves progressively into the back country, echoed in White’s Geopoetical writings as “mindscape within landscape”. The rediscovery of “natural lines of development” are central to the work of both writers.

White spoke about some of the ways in which Gunn travels from “mouth to source” in his use of language, the associations of the double “n” in the main character’s name, for example with the “Finn Cycle” of Celtic literature.

He also stressed the way in which Gunn’s novel moves past Scots, Norse or Gaelic references towards the primordial, an experience of nature (an ultimately human nature) that is both real and physical.

The psychic synthesis of this experience and “accent on delicate subtle sensation” in Gunn’s novel suggests that “all man moves to is the light”. To examine life in this way in terms of  “light”, “delight” and “enlightenment” doesn’t suggest idealism or escapism but the desire to reach a state, “an extreme north of the mind” where the “whole being passes thoughtless into the condition of light”.

White’s discussion raised important questions about our attitude towards Scottish and Highland Culture and the kind of territorial reconnaissance necessary to reveal “the landscape inside”. For me this is the most compelling aspect of his argument, the awareness of self in relation to the world and the idea that to be naturally local is to also be naturally global.

It reflects a commonality or baseline of human experience rooted in the earth. Both the journey of Gunn’s protagonist and Kenneth White’s work would seem to be about the expansion of being and the integration of knowledge, scientific, philosophical and poetic.

In moving away from the communal scene of the village and into nature Gunn’s central character in “Highland River” moves further and deeper into himself and the source of his own culture – culture, that is, in its broadest terms, with the possibility of growth, of nurturing a human being.

Expanding our “horizon of intent”, opening out a fuller spectrum of thought in relation to culture is one of our greatest challenges in the 21st century.

White’s conclusion after his detailed and fascinating analysis of the different stages of human consciousness in Gunn’s text was to leave the audience with “a great open work field”. In light of this focus year it was an appropriate challenge invoking a significant legacy of thought.

(The Neil Gunn Lecture received funding from Highland 2007 and RACE. The Inverness Book Festival runs until 5 October)

© Georgina Coburn, 2007

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Peter Urpeth, Far Inland

The 3rd annual Inverness Book Festival featured a range of writers from all across Scotland and beyond, but this session focused on two first-time novelists based in the Highlands and Islands. Angus Dunn is a man with a colourful career, a joiner to trade and a writer by inclination, while Peter Urpeth, the HI~Arts Writing Development Coordinator, has adopted Lewis as his home.

Both writers have had their first novels published this year, although Dunn’s will not be in the book shops until next week. Both spoke of their radically contrasting fortunes in getting their books published.

Dunn spent five years approaching agents and publishers in intermittent bursts of activity before an introduction brokered by fellow Black Isle writer Anne MacLeod finally opened the door, while Urpeth was accepted by the first agent he approached, the late Giles Gordon, something he put down to fortuitous timing and Gordon’s long-standing support for Scottish writing with a rural than fashionably urban focus.

Despite some common threads running through their books, including a fascination with other-worldly experiences (second sight in Urpeth’s book, portals to parallel universes in Dunn’s), their books are very different.

Urpeth’s “Far Inland” is a compact, highly refined affair set on a Hebridean island and in Glasgow, and reflects his fascination with shamanism and the shared myths and lore of the north Atlantic fringe, while Dunn’s “Writing in the Sand”, set on the Black Isle in the fictional village of Cromness, is a sprawling, episodic tome that began life as a weekly story on a local website, and took on a momentum of its own as he wrote.

If their books were different, the commitment which they brought to writing them was similar. Urpeth began writing his the day after he left his job on a local newspaper in Lewis, and spent the next two years working intensely on it, while Dunn spent five years painstakingly writing and re-writing his own book.

No surprise, then, that both felt that getting the book into print and into the hands of readers was a necessary pay-off for that commitment in time and creative energy.

Setting is important to both books. Urpeth agreed that it was important to engage with your own environment, while Dunn felt that the Black Isle was almost another character in the book, rather than simply a setting.

One lady praised the accuracy with which Urpeth had portrayed island life, while another asked Dunn if his book drew on a Highland oral tradition of ever-embellishing tall takes and fantastical doings. The writer agreed that was very much the case, and that he had been aware of that Celtic/Highland model as he wove the branching and converging strands of his own narrative.

Urpeth had also delved deeply into Highland lore, and also Inuit mythology, and had gone among the older crofters on Lewis seeking out old or very localised Gaelic expressions and beliefs (a glossary of Gaelic words is included in the book). His aim had been to refine and pare-down rather than to welcome proliferation.

Peter Urpeth’s ‘Far Inland’ is published by Birlinn, while Angus Dunn’s ‘Writing in the Sand’ is published by Luath on 19 October)

© Kenny Mathieson, 2006

JASON ROSE looks forward to welcoming a diverse range of writers to his third festival.

THE CREATOR of ‘Captain Corelli’s Mandolin’, a poet who plays golf because during a coma his dad told him to, and the man who wanted Britt Ekland’s bum on the big screen… Proof that the Inverness Book Festival has something for everyone! These are just three of the fourteen authors appearing at the Royal Highland Hotel this year.

So who besides literary megastar Louis de Bernieres, ‘Wicker Man’ creator Robin Hardy and acclaimed Scots poet and mountaineer Andrew Greig, is appearing?

Well, it would be a crime to miss Chris Brookmyre and Anne Perry, and there are real treats in store for kids thanks to bestsellers Matthew Fitt and Debi Gliori.

People with a soft spot for poetry and wildlife should make a bee-line for the brilliant Kathleen Jamie whose natural history observations have made ‘Findings‘ one of the most amazing books of recent years.

I’ve organised some events to explore aspects of our culture. Travel writer Nick Thorpe’s journey around Scotland by hitching a lift on boats made for a soul-searching serial on Radio 4 recently; Joanna Blythman’s hard-hitting journalism on supermarkets and junk food is particularly appropriate for Inverness (or Tescotown, as we’re now called); and Carl MacDougall is probably the most enthusiastic authority on Scots.

Of course the festival isn’t just a chance to meet great writers from Scotland and around the UK, it’s a platform for the best local talent. This year I’m delighted to give a slot to Angus Dunn and Peter Urpeth. Both are well known on the Highland literary scene, but only now have they become published novelists and their stories are definitely setting the heather alight.

Finally, there’s Adam! Need I say more?

The festival was always going to take time to ‘bed in’. It’s got to wiggle its way into people’s precious free time.

There are two challenges. Firstly, literary events are still novel, if you’ll pardon the pun, in the Highland Capital. Just the other day someone asked me: ’Will the authors be there in person and will they be able to sign books?‘

Er, yes. And I’ve even had folk refusing to believe that Louis de Bernieres really is coming to Inverness. Secondly, Inverness is a ‘family’ place where weekends are about barbecues and car boot sales. I found during the first two festivals that some of the weekend events had bizarrely low audiences, despite high calibre authors.
 In fact last year a number of people who said they’d see me at the festival over the weekend didn’t turn up and admitted to me later that they’d simply forgotten and did their usual thing.

So, in a move that I concede is a gamble, this year’s festival is on weekdays only. I’ve also introduced events at lunchtime. Just think of the city centre worker stuck in a windowless staff room during lunch reading a book. Wouldn’t you jump at the chance to meet a famous author instead? I can think of no finer way to escape the daily grind.

The Inverness Book Festival has made it to a third year, which suggests that it’s here to stay. Please spread the word and help continue its success.

Jason Rose is the director of the Inverness Book Festival.

© Jason Rose, 2006

Links

• Inverness Book Festival 

Festival director JASON ROSE sets the scene for the second Inverness Book Festival

THE SECOND FESTIVAL is looming large. It feels like only yesterday I was running around at the first one – in fact, I’ve only just calmed down.

That inaugural event went very well, even though it didn’t break even financially. There were some wonderful events that didn’t generate the audiences I expected, which was baffling. But we also had huge crowds for some events and I was glad we had the main Eden Court auditorium to contain them.

Overall, we had about 1,500 bums on seats over the 4 days, which is pretty good going for a first effort. It would be tempting to expect even more this time round as people are now more aware of the festival.

However, we don’t have the luxury of Eden Court. The Royal Highland Hotel is a great venue but can only seat 200 folk at the most. As I type, tickets are selling particularly well for Richard Holloway, Michel Faber, Don Paterson and Jeremy Strong.

As long as the authors and the audience have a good time, though, I’m not too concerned about numbers. I just hope people don’t think that they have to have read the authors’ books before they’re allowed to come along. Some of my best experiences at other book festivals have been when I’ve turned up on a recommendation. It’s how I discovered John Irving.

This year’s line-up is completely different from last year’s. I did that on purpose. I wanted to emphasise how much variety there is out there and that the literary world is Inverness’s oyster; we can ask anyone to come here.

I’d like to think that it will inspire more Highlanders to have a go at writing and put Inverness on the literary circuit, giving us a chance to compete with other UK cities for visits from the greatest writers on earth.

Last year we began with a bang with big names like Banks and Brookmyre. This year I have mostly gone for writers whose works are of outstanding quality but who don’t seem to get the limelight they deserve.

Michel Faber is the greatest living writer in the Highlands and we should be reading his stories out loud from the rooftops. His new collection is brilliant, in particular the erotic ‘Explaining Coconuts’, which doesn’t actually contain any sex.

Zoe Strachan and Louise Welsh are two fine Glasgow-based authors whose novels have ‘wowed the critics’, as the saying goes. Louise also has a twisted sense of humour and will have them rolling in the aisles even though her stories are about murders and mysteries.

Jenny Colgan writes chick-lit but good chick-lit. Dan Rhodes is warped and destined for greatness. Then there’s local lass Emma Maree Urquhart, who has had plenty of limelight, but at such a tender age it’ll be interesting to hear how she’s coped.

Alex ‘Lads from the Ferry’ Mabon has also generated a lot of interest for a first time novelist but he is – how shall I put this – slightly older than Emma, ahem. Richard Holloway is one of Scotland’s greatest thinkers, Don Paterson is one of our greatest poets, and Richard Jobson seems to be single-handedly reviving the film industry.

Then there’s James Meek. I knew him as a brilliant reporter for the Guardian, but I had never read any of his fiction. I skimmed through an advance excerpt from ‘The People’s Act of Love’ and was hooked. I invited him on a hunch and now he has been long-listed for the Booker Prize. Boy, do I feel smug!

In the event James didn’t make the short-list, but Inverness-born Ali Smith has, and for a second time. ‘Hotel World’ should have scooped the prize and I’m crossing my fingers and toes for ‘The Accidental’. Inverness’s brightest literary talent read from it at last year’s festival.

Technical aspects of the festival have been changed in an effort to make it even better. We’ve lowered ticket prices and have a special offer: buy 3 and get a 4th free. I’ve spaced out the events a bit more so there’s plenty of time for questions from the audience (and maybe also time to nip to the bar).

We put the brochure out a bit earlier and have persuaded the bookshops to promote the festival even more. They all have stickers for books to show which ones are by festival authors, and they have ‘shelftalkers’, which are those little cards sticking out of the shelf with a wee recommendation from me to go see the author in question.

We’ve even had some tasteful t-shirts made up for the booksellers to wear. Hopefully, by now, you can’t fail to notice that there’s something going on! I’m very grateful to Borders, Charles Leakey, Ottakar’s and Waterstone’s for their continued involvement.

I think it could take another few years before the Inverness Book Festival becomes as big and popular as I’d like. We’ve stuck to the Thursday to Sunday format and I’ve tried to keep costs down by only having one or two authors on stage during each event. This also gives the authors and their fans more time together.

We’re probably always going to suffer from a lack of ‘presence’. What I mean by that is that in Edinburgh you know the festival is on when big white tents start appearing in Charlotte Square. From the outside, a theatre or a hotel always looks the same. We do have plans to hang a large banner across Academy Street and place small billboards outside the Royal Highland Hotel to catch people’s attention.

I’m really looking forward to the festival. I’d like to think that it will inspire more Highlanders to have a go at writing and put Inverness on the literary circuit, giving us a chance to compete with other UK cities for visits from the greatest writers on earth. But I’m also interested to see how the public respond to it and whether they, like me, feel that it should become an annual event.

Jason Rose is the Director of Inverness Book Festival

© Jason Rose, 2005

THE INVERNESS BOOK FESTIVAL brings a diverse selection of local, nationally and internationally known writers to the city.

THE IDEA OF an Inverness Book Festival became a reality after a conversation on the lawn of the Eden Court Theatre last summer, but it was a concept that had been brewing for some time.

 The instigators of that fateful chat were Jason Rose, the director of the festival, and Colin Marr, the director of Eden Court Theatre. Both had both been thinking independently along these lines for some time.

 It is an idea whose time has come, and if it is not yet ready to stand alongside heavyweight events like the Edinburgh International Book Festival, it offers an attractive line-up of events.

 The festival is based in the Eden Court Theatre, with the main events in the auditorium, and there will also be free events in the city’s participating bookshops: Ottakers, Waterstones, Borders, WH Smith and local dealer Charles Leakey.

 The Inverness Book Festival runs from 7-10 October.   

© HI~Arts, 2004

Related Link

• Inverness Book Festival website

The festival is a welcome addition to the Highlands & Islands calendar, and will complement more modest but well-established literary gatherings in the region. The success of the giant Edinburgh International Book Festival has demonstrated that there is a real appetite among the reading public for meeting and listening to writers as well as reading them, and we wish the newcomer well in its maiden voyage.

Traditional music is a more indigenous part of the Highland scene, but recent attendances in Inverness have suggested that the audience in the city is not as large or loyal as assumed. Eden Court’s week long series of traditional concerts featuring the likes of Alastair Fraser, rising star Emily Smith and The Poozies did poorly at the box office, with the notable exception of Blazin’ Fiddles.

It seems that the local favourites – and that would include both that fabulous band and the ever-reliable Aly Bain and Phil Cunningham – will tempt audiences out, but anything new, unfamiliar or not specifically local will not. The recent TMSA Young Trad Tour featured an excellent line up, but barely limped into double figures. There were mitigating circumstances that night – Meantime playing at Farr the same night, the Friends of Highland Music Rising Stars concert the following night, and Eddi Reader in town two days later – but it is a disturbing trend.

Gaelic language has featured on the Arts Journal since its inception, but we now plan to have a regular Gaelic piece, starting with Rody Gorman’s assessment of the new work of Rob Kerr, who has just finished a three year stint as Writer in Residence at the Gaelic College in Skye.

Piper Fred Morrison is our main interview this month, while Meantime will be our Band Profile. The refurbished Lyth Arts Centre in Caithness is our Venue Profile, and look out for the usual news, reviews and additional features as October unfolds.

Kenny Mathieson
Commissioning Editor

Quarks, strangeness and charm (or, how your doctor might be writing novels in his/her spare time): ANNE MACLEOD ponders the complex relationship between her dual roles as medical practitioner and creative writer, and finds an answer to the fundamental question posed by her mischievous colleague in Stromness – why bother with books?

DR DEREK JOHNSON of Stromness, GP, one of Scotland’s most original medical minds, remarked to me many years ago, that nothing in a novel could ever come close to medicine, to life.  “So why,” he fixed me with an insouciant gaze, “bother with books?”  

It was January.  We were striding across a field on Graemsay, doing the weekly round, having motored to the island in what seemed to me a perilously small boat.  A student, on attachment, I had been in Stromness two days, maybe three.   

I thought about it.  Didn’t know what to say.  I would do better now.  So many years on, a practising writer/doctor, I have become much more aware of what we are actually doing in story, in life.  I’ve learned more, too,  about other doctors with similar obsessions.  Doctors on whom the Literature in Medicine movement is founded.

William Carlos Williams didn’t start it.  Nor did Chekhov.  Nor Keats. Nor was it Smollet, Somerset Maugham, Joyce, or Shelley, all of whom practised (or studied) medicine. The story is much older, much simpler. It comes down to this: doctors are communicators.  Medicine and the word – medicine, poem and story – have always gone together. Leonardo may have prized the visual above the word, but Pallas Athene was Goddess of poetry, healing and war; Brigit the Celtic patron of poets, smiths and healers.

There were sound practical reasons for honing poetic technique in early literate and pre-literate society. With knowledge fiercely guarded, the rhythm and music of verse acted as a necessary, powerful aid to memory, the highly geared changes of poetic language underpinning magic rites and ceremonial. Real politique. That power, so mistrusted by Socrates, of transporting the listener, swaying the emotions, must have seemed as vibrant as cinema’s widest screen, more convincing than all the special effects of even WETA Workshop. A heady mix. No wonder Plato worried about it.

In 388 BC, he urged the city fathers of Athens to exile all poets and storytellers, because they and their work were a threat to society, concealing IDEAS within the seductive emotions of ART.  The persuasive power of story was such, he said, that we might believe and empathise with a narrative even when it was morally repellent.  Storytellers were dangerous people. He did, however, like and trust physicians. “The best physician,” he said, “is he who is able to separate fair love from foul, or to convert one  into the other; and he who knows how to eradicate and implant love, whichever is required, and can reconcile the most hostile elements in the constitution  and make them loving friends, is a skilful practitioner.”

But doctors, healers, work not just with scientific expertise, but with narrative. Robert MacKee in Story, his screenwriting manual, might have been describing a medical encounter.  He sheds generous light on the possible interaction between doctor and patient when he says: “When a character steps into your life he brings an abundance of story possibilities.  If you wish, you could start the telling before the character is born, then follow him day after day, decade and decade, until dead and gone.  A character’s life encompasses hundreds of thousands of living hours, both complex and multilevelled… “

Stories are important to us all. Narratives, the words we live in, illustrate our world,  define us more exactly than we know.  They are enacted in the body, as read or spoken. Like the Olympic athletes visualising the next attempt at jump or throw, the reader, the listener, physically relive story and poem. Antonio Damasio, the experimental neurologist, suggests in The Feeling of What Happens that narrative may in fact be the key to consciousness.

“Meaning cannot be fixed – never permanently –  even in apparently simple language.”

“We begin with a first trick…  an account of what happens within the organism when the organism reacts with an object, be it actually perceived, or recalled, be it within the body boundaries (eg  pain) or outside of them (eg landscape.)  This account is a simple narrative without words.  It does have characters (the organism, the object).  It unfolds in time.  And it has a beginning, a middle and an end… the initial state of the organism.. the arrival of the object..  the reactions that result in the modified state of the organism.”

There you have it, wordless self awareness.  But language is more than that:  language is a matter of negotiation.  You only have to attempt an important letter to realise that the spoken symbols we take so much for granted are slippery, unwieldy tools – one reason, perhaps, why so much scientific and business writing is indigestibly cluttered with jargon. Meaning cannot be fixed – never permanently –  even in apparently simple language. And without intelligible narratives, without language, it seems we have difficulty in forming conscious memories, cannot navigate our way through life.  Helen Keller remembered little of life before the age of five when she distinguished her first word Water  from her teacher signing the word into one palm while running water over the other.
 
Some widely published medical narratives have become greatly loved- wonderful patient and doctor stories, like Robert McCrum’s  My Year Off, or Oliver Sacks’s The Man who Mistook His Wife For A Hat. But all storytelling is important. Trisha Greenhalgh and Brian Hurwitz, editors of Narrative Based Medicine, the seminal British text assert that story-telling has always been and remains a fundamental part of communication and culture, the basis of our evolutionary survival kit. Lives and personalities are, after all,  narrative construct. Narrative is vital, not only in communication, but in shaping and maintaining a sense of who we are.

The place of writing is even more complex. In Egyptian mythology, writing was invented by Thoth, the ibis-headed god, who offered it to Ammon, a pharmakon to render the whole world wise.  Ammon, however, judged writing to be more pharmakon than magic – like any medicine, it had good effects and bad.  Writing, he said, would give the appearance of wisdom where there was none.

“The medical schools of Scotland have, throughout the centuries, spawned medical wordsmiths.”

We tend to think differently now.  The Oxford Companion to Philosophy may have difficulty defining what art is and what it is not, but it states this categorically:  “Art is vital to Moral Health … allowing us without risk to explore in depth – in plays and novels – the essential nature and outworking of endless types of human character and social interaction.” Artistic success may, as suggested in Strong Imagination  by Daniel Nettle, even offer a sexual selection advantage – rock stars and writers (male), he says, are sexy –  if, occasionally, mad.  Even a BMJ editorial in 2002 emphasized the benefits of involvement in the Arts:  “There is more to health than physical completeness, and absence of pain;  it is also about making sense of the world.”

Does art – does writing – make us better doctors?  Dannie Abse, one of Europe’s most prolific doctor-poet, is not sure: “Tobias Smollett, the novelist, did not prosper as a surgeon … Goldsmith was advised to treat his enemies rather than his patients. Keats … suffered from too much empathy with creatures and things to become a good doctor, to survive, perhaps, as a doctor.”

Abse, a retired Respiratory Physician, Welsh, has produced an extensive  body of work: ten volumes of poetry (the first published while he was still a medical student), three novels, plays, and autobiography. His gift for storytelling, for asking difficult questions, elevate a lyrical gift to greatness but White Coat, Purple Coat, the title piece of his collected poems, reflects his uncertainties over the doctor/poet role:  “white coat and purple coat/ few men can reconcile.” 

But reconcile it they do, over and over.  The medical schools of Scotland have, throughout the centuries, spawned medical wordsmiths.  Peter Mark Roget studied in Edinburgh, compiling his famous Thesaurus after his retiral from an eminent medical career. Goldsmith was also an Edinburgh graduate, as was Arthur Conan Doyle, who unleashed Sherlock Holmes upon a rapturous world, basing the famous character on his teacher, Dr Joseph Bell.  And let’s not forget the west.  A J Cronin, creator of Doctor Finlay (and Janet) graduated from Glasgow. 

“My own published work … moves between poetry and fiction. The poetry was always there: the narrative impulse much more gradual.”

Scotland’s medics are a dab hand at poetry too.  Gael Turnbull, anaesthetist and GP who sadly died last July, was famous for the elegance and lightness of his lyrics, the output of a true and original mind. One of the most prominent of the British avant-garde, he started Migrant Press in 1957, and was an important figure in British Poetry Revival of the 1960’s. He forged strong connections with the Black Mountain Group and throughout his life kept pushing borders, asking questions. His poem machines and installations reflected his deep interest in language and precision. “The joy,” he always said, “is in the attention” – attention that never wavered.

Scotland boasts prominent living doctor/writers too.  Iain Bamforth, eminent poet, GP, and Scottish, currently practises in Strasbourg. His attention to linguistic detail, and delight in language promise a long career of intellectual rigour. His most recent published project is The Body in the Library, a literary anthology of modern medicine, published by Verso in 2003.  A Carcanet poet, his next collection, A place in the world, is due to appear in 2005.  

Suhayl Saadi, another Glasgow graduate and thinker, offers an intriguingly  diverse literary CV:  his first novel, The Snake, erotic fiction, appeared from Creation Books, under the name Melanie Desmoulins.  The Burning Mirror, under his own name, was published by Polygon in 2001, followed by the novel, Psychoraag from Black and White in 2003.  Saadi is an articulate, distinctive voice.   For him writing is healing act.
 
“I was a writer who happened to be a doctor and the two vocations had no discernible linkage in my brain. However, to the Greeks, science was one of the liberal arts. Surgical procedures, the consultation, the laying on of hands, the tiny acts of healing we do every day – all of this is art… Chinese, Indian and Greek medical systems regard the human being as an open system, as does modern biology. We interact with our external environment, so that the division between external and internal, physical and mental, self and other, becomes essentially untenable. Sport, art and (fulfilling) work have, at semiotic base, this striving for unity. Broken people are ill people. To some extent, we are all broken.”

Martin MacIntyre, doctor, actor, singer, and storyteller too, is currently the beneficiary of a Scottish Arts Council Writer’s Bursary, working on a novel in Gaelic to follow his first collection of short stories Ath-Aithne, Clar 2003, which won a Saltire First Book of the Year award.

In fact, there are Scottish doctors at work in all literary fields. Stephen Potts, psychiatrist in Edinburgh is one of Scotland’s most prolific and exciting authors for children.  His adventure stories reflect his passion for the sea – an intimate knowledge of boats and the  wild wastes of the North inform his Running Tide series, the last of which The Ship Thief was published in Sept 2004.  I have yet to read this, but Compass Murphy, the second in this series, is exceptional.

My own published work, as Highland readers may know, moves between poetry and fiction. The poetry was always there: the narrative impulse much more gradual.  Fiction needs space, demands emotional energy.  Medicine, the family, writing, all take time.  As Suhayl Saadi says: “I do three days a week professionally to pay the bills… you can’t write a novel like that. You’ve got to have chunks of time, a couple of weeks to really get into it. You can edit, once it’s done you can edit anytime, anywhere.” 

For every one  of us straddling these two demanding fields, the need for energy, for dedication, is obvious. Both disciplines demand it.  This takes its toll and yet we do it somehow,  square the circle.  Why?  What was it Chekhov said?  Medicine is my lawful wife and literature my mistress? 

I tend towards a more unified view. William Carlos Williams (famous for comparing poems to machines) found that medicine was the thing which gained him entrance to “the secret gardens of the self”.  What more could the physician, the storyteller need than self-knowledge?  An understanding of the gardens of the mind, the vital, vivid space we inhabit, every last one of us.  The great adventure of medicine so vast, so huge, that people you encounter teach you at every turn.  The feeling of what happens.

But Dr Derek Johnson, retired GP, one of Scotland’s most original and discriminating minds, said to me many years ago, that nothing in a novel could ever be as exciting, as moving as medicine, as life.  So why bother with books? 

The question was rhetorical.  It was January.  We were striding across a field on Graemsay, doing the weekly round, having travelled to the island in a small motor boat.  A student, on attachment, I had been there two days, maybe three.  Long enough to know he was teasing.  His house was overflowing with newspapers, journals, books.  Wonderful sea paintings.  He had introduced another friend, George MacKay Brown, only the day before. 

Reducing me to silence. W hat do you say to someone whose work you so admire?  How could I turn to George MacKay Brown and say: “Your poems and stories are wonderful, really wonderful, the best I’ve read?” How can you say those things?  I opened my mouth. Nothing came out.  “Hello, Anne,” George nodded. “Wet this morning, isn’t it?”

Why bother with books? 

Derek again.  Remember, we’re tramping across Graemsay.  I had no answer for him,  except – I liked the stories.  That’s what I liked in medicine too.  The folk you met. What happened to them.  That’s still true today. It’s not th
dance of atoms that holds my interest, not the creative mythic thought of modern science with all its quarks, strangeness, and charm, but the people I meet and their burgeoning storied lives.

Why bother with books? 

Derek doesn’t give up easily.  And this is many years ago.  I’m not yet twenty-one.  Newly engaged.  Still conscious of the diamond ring twisting on my finger. I haven’t heard of narrative in medicine.  Haven’t heard of William Carlos Williams. Dannie Abse.  I’m a medical student, remember? Unread.  The Houseman’s Tale, Colin Douglas’s iconic blackly humorous novel has not yet been published. I read when I can, mainly poetry.  I still think Leonard Cohen is pretty cool.  Charles Causley too. I don’t know it will take me a good ten years to recover the mental space and energy to write more than the odd, necessary lyric.

Why bother with books? 

It’s January in Orkney.  Grey.  I’m exhilarated.  I’ve fallen in love with the low green islands and Hoy’s overhanging mammoth hill, even at this darkest, bleakest time, which oddly, parallels the years ahead, the stretching hours of work, on-call, lack of sleep.  More work.  More on-call. 

Derek would tell you black was white to get you arguing.  Why bother with books? he insists.  I smile.  ‘Because – because I love them.’ 
 
I can’t think of a better answer, then or now.

Anne Macleod’s new novel The Blue Moon Book is published by Luath Publishing on 11th October 2004.  It will be launched as part of Inverness Book Festival on Saturday 9th October at 2pm in Waterstones Bookshop, Inverness.

The Inverness Book Festival runs from Thursday 7 to Sunday 10 October, for more information contact Eden Court on 01463 234234.

© Anne Macleod, 2004

Related Links

• Luath Press website
• Inverness Book Festival

Festival Director JASON ROSE lays out his plans for the inaugural Inverness Book Festival in October.

It’s a conspiracy! Many of the best stories are, of course, but this is for real…

Five business rivals bury the hatchet for the sake of culture and the community. Writers from all genres and all parts of the country jump at the chance to be in the same place during the same week. Does something smell a bit fishy? Well, the butler didn’t do it, it was me.

I have been overwhelmed by just how keen everyone is for there to be an Inverness Book Festival, and at times it has felt like everything has just ‘conspired’ to fall into place to make it happen. Last summer I sat on the lawn outside Eden Court Theatre with Colin Marr, the theatre’s director, tossing the idea of a book festival in the air. A year on and it’s about to take the city by storm. Over four days in October more than two dozen authors will descend on the Highland Capital to create that magic atmosphere that exists when readers get to meet writers.

Like a character in a Poirot novel who admits to jealousy when he is snared for some evil-doing, I must confess that the Inverness Book Festival is happening partly because I’m envious of the fun they have every year in Edinburgh. Inverness has changed a lot since I came here twelve years ago. It’s a confident city with a Premier League football team and all the facilities you’d expect, but with the added bonus of the fantastic Highland environment and quality of life.

“From the extraordinary fiction of Michel Faber to the giggle-some children’s books of Mairi Hedderwick, round every corner in the Highlands there’s someone crafting away at something creative, and we should celebrate that”

By having a book festival we can attract big names to our area to send a clear message that we’re not the ‘basket case’ that many outsiders perhaps still regard the Highlands as. ‘Basket case’ was coined by Jim Hunter, the outgoing HIE chairman, and just one of the brilliant authors the North should be proud of. I sometimes think that there’s something in the water when I think of all the great writers on our doorstep. None gets the recognition he or she deserves. From the extraordinary fiction of Michel Faber to the giggle-some children’s books of Mairi Hedderwick, round every corner in the Highlands there’s someone crafting away at something creative, and we should celebrate that.

So, who’s all taking part in the festival? Be patient. The brochure will be available from the end of August at all good bookshops. Namely: Waterstone’s, Borders, Charles Leakey, WH Smith and Ottaker’s. Eden Court is braced for a stampede on tickets. In the meantime I can tell you about a few of the events and I can promise something for everyone. It’s a bit of a cliché but I’m standing by it.

We open on the Thursday afternoon with an appetising talk by Lady Claire Macdonald of Kinloch Lodge on Skye, whose cookery books make the most of the great food and drink we have here in the Highlands. The opening night event will feature a reviewer’s dream of three world-class authors: Jackie Kay, Toby Litt and Ali Smith. Ali is originally from Inverness and has been a great source of support and information for me. I know she’s dead chuffed about her home city finally getting a literary celebration. Jackie is one of Scotland’s finest poets and short-story writers and Toby Litt’s writing is a sharp as tacks. As far as I can figure he has no connection to Inverness but his appearance proves that Inverness can give other literary locations a run for their money.

“The festival won’t just be for bookworms. I hope that it’s an event that everyone can enjoy”

The big names continue on the Friday night with Iain Banks and Christopher Brookmyre, followed by Doug Scott, the legendary mountaineer. Saturday will feature loads of stuff for younger readers, including Inverness’s very own John Ward revealing part two of his thrilling trilogy for teenagers. Sunday is a real treat with three Highland authors revealing how they got published: Anne Macleod, Jim Miller and Erica Munro. To close the festival, someone who’s been everywhere and done everthing, pretty much: Winnie Ewing, the only person to have been an MP, an MEP and an MSP.

The festival won’t just be for bookworms. I hope that it’s an event that everyone can enjoy, even if they don’t consider themselves ‘bookish’. Books are all around us. You only have to look at recent blockbuster movies to realise that mainstream culture wouldn’t be what it is without writers. Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Cold Mountain, I’m Not Scared, Around the World in 80 Days, and so on – all had their origins between hard covers.

Personally, I’m looking forward to the film of the book of the radio play of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Sadly, we’ll never see Douglas Adams at the Inverness Book Festival but maybe, just maybe, by putting readers together with writers to talk about food, poetry, crime, science fiction, the environment, politics, love and death we can find the answer to life, the universe and everything.

The Inverness Book Festival runs from Thursday 7 to Sunday 10 October. For more information contact Eden Court Theatre on 01463 234234.

© Jason Rose, 2004

Related Link

• Inverness Book Festival