FINAL (RANDOM) THOUGHTS

EDINBURGH

At the book festival:

A) Too hip for their own good: 1) the portly guy with the slash of whiskers under his bottom lip hosting the Canongate “Unbound” performance event in the late-night Spiegeltent in Charlotte Square. Trying to be a Beat 60 years after the fact just sounds horrible. “Could you cats at the bar keep the noise down just a little?” he said. Cats?? Set the dog on him, please. 2) The beautiful post-modern academic doing stuff about the meaning of social media who tries so hard to be cool on her CV: “She has a doctorate – ya know – in social technologies and media + stuff”… “Universities: A few. Here and there”… “Work: Yes I do, when I’m not updating Facebook.” Yuk.

B) Too … everything: the troubled man who at the end of an event on famous hypochondriacs got the mike to ask a question that he didn’t have because instead he had spent “the past thirty minutes preparing a statement about the fact that I have in my time been diagnosed manic-depressive, paranoid schizophrenic and bi-polar…”. Invited by the chairperson (that would be moi) to ask his question he then began an altercation with said chairperson (still moi) that went on for the next five minutes to the growing disgruntlement/fascination of the rest of the audience. Hmm.

C) Truly hip: the legendary American Beat JIM HAYNES, founder of the Traverse and IT and sundry other UK ventures, lecturer in sexology at Paris University and creator of a famous Sunday night Open Dinner in his atelier there, now immortalised in (of all things) a series of After Eight TV adverts. Wandering happily between the Assembly club bar and the author’s yurt, a benign smile on his face, a secular pope bestowing benedictions on all he meets.

ECONOMICS & CHINESE WHISPERS

YET MORE EDINBURGH

I had more than a double dip of economics events this year. JOHN HOLLOWAY talking “crack capitalism” (i.e. operating in the cracks of the system) was like an Old Testament prophet with his shock of white hair, impassioned delivery and dramatic rhetorical questions about the iniquities of capitalism. He alienated some of the audience. DAVID SMITH, economics editor of the Sunday Times, sitting beside him, was more sanguine about what most economists here are accepting is the least worst economic system. The event engendered fierce passions in the audience that I don’t think the authors could ever have satisfied.

ANATOLE KALETSKY, editor at large with the Times, views capitalism as an evolving system that adapts to even the most severe crises. He thinks we have just seen that Capitalism 3.0, the free market so enthusiastically supported by Reagan and Thatcher, is not the answer. (And China’s economic success makes nonsense of the free marketers’ rubric “a free market means a free people”.) He calls the inevitable re-boot Capitalism 4.0.

MATT RIDLEY’s point of view in his panel and his “The Rational Optimist” is in agreement on many points – though perhaps not surprisingly as Kaletsky is his brother-in-law. I was imagining the table-talk at dinner at Matt’s Grade 1 listed pile in Northumberland when the family was at home.

Ridley’s optimism was matched by his co-panellist’s pessimism – or, as STUART SIM was quick to say, “realism”.

Stuart lay much of the blame for our current parlous state on the unregulated banks, of course, as anybody would, but was too polite to risk embarrassing Matt Ridley by pointing out the author of the bestselling “Genome”(and nephew of Thatcher minister, Nicholas Ridley) was chairman of Northern Rock when that particular crisis hit. The two together made for a very buzzy event. Kaletsky was paired with HA-JOON CHANG, the South Korean academic based at Cambridge, whose “23 Things You Didn’t Know About Capitalism” is an entertaining and easily understood look at modern capitalism. If I tell you he points out that the invention of the washing machine has been more important than that of the internet then you’ll get the idea…

JAN WONG also engendered strong passions among at least some audience members. The Canadian journalist, who alas has modelled herself on Lynn Barber (isn’t one Barber bad enough?), has written “Chinese Whispers”. As an act of youthful rebellion (I’m guessing) against her entrepreneurial Chinese-Canadian father, she abandoned McGill university and went to China as a convinced Maoist at the height of the Cultural Revolution. Whilst there she denounced a fellow-student who asked her if she could help her get to the United States.

In “Chinese Whispers” she recounts her search for this woman on a relatively recent family trip to Beijing.

Some half a dozen audience members told me separately later that JAN showed little contrition for what she’d done and just seemed to be exploiting the woman she had already made a victim. Certainly, the rather jaunty tone of the book – there is much joking around among her family members – jibes oddly with that act of betrayal.

CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT

THE STORY BEGINS

I've written a couple of pieces about the origins of the new novel for Shots Ezine and Crime Time respectively. There is some overlap but on the whole the two complement rather than duplicate each other. Find them on: www.shotsmag.co.uk & www.crimetime.co.uk/mag/

ABI TITMUSS TO THE LEFT OF ME TWO OLGAS TO THE RIGHT

EDINBURGH BOOK FESTIVAL WEEK TWO

Assembly's club bar and ABI TITMUSS has just wandered in, looking lovely. Unlikely as it seems the glamour model is plugging away with an acting career – and not just in panto. She's here with Hull Truck doing John Godber's play Up and Under. Wherever you go here you see unlikely conjunctions of event and performer. A couple of days ago NICHOLAS PARSONS hobbled into the book festival to do an event. He's been part of my life, via television and radio, pretty much all my life, from Arthur Haynes straight man through to Just A Minute on BBC R4. I interviewed him ages ago and I have to say that I didn't warm to him. He had a massive sense of his own importance. But then, join the gang.

I'm in here taking a breather from the book festival which is eleven days in. In the days that I wrote about comedy and the Fringe (days that inspired my first novel “No Laughing Matter”) various incarnations of this bar (it has moved around the Assembly Rooms building) were a refuge and a meeting point. Don’t get me started on memories of those times but I can still picture in the bar when it was upstairs BILLY CONNOLLY glowering because there were journalists in the room; GRAHAM NORTON (pre-fame) recounting gleefully ordering a pizza take-out for his entire audience; and a lesbian comic I’d better not name getting into a fist-fight.

In Charlotte Square I’ve been blessed with good events across a broad range of subjects.

Academic MICHAEL DILLON and Asia hand FRANCIS PIKE clashed good-naturedly but illuminatingly on China’s economic future and its impact on the rest of us. One of Pike’s premises in his weighty but readable tome, “Empires At War”, is the rise and now decline of the US as the major Asian empire of the 20th century. Go West, Americans were told in the 19th century, and they did and carried on doing so until they reached the East. China’s rise will be at the expense of the US’s fall in his view.

IAN BLAIR, controversial ex-police commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, was down to earth and open. He took criticism on the chin, was thoughtful about some of the decisions he took in his four years in charge of London policing – four years that saw terror attacks in London and the shooting by police of an innocent man at Stockwell. But he was also funny and wry about other aspects of his career – and even announced who Jack the Ripper was.

JIM BAGGOTT was illuminating on the race for the ATOMIC BOMB and had some footage of Oppenheimer , father of the US bomb, making his famous reading from the Hindu scriptures: “Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of worlds.” Still makes you shiver. We are both admirers of JOSEPH KANON’s remarkable novel LOS ALAMOS about the Manhattan Project, which I remember buying in hardback on Villiers Street in London for 50p in a remaindered book store I went into to get out of a rainstorm. I then took shelter in Gordons, the legendary and legendarily seedy looking basement wine bar, hollowed out of smoke-blackened arches, just further down the street, where I read the first 50 pages at a gulp.

GWYNNE DYER in his thought-provoking/thought-paralysing talk on the CLIMATE WARS we might expect to come with global warming also talked atomic, or rather nuclear. For him nuclear energy is the least worst option for future energy – plus, Britain will need a nuclear arsenal again to keep out all those from Europe trying to get in once southern Europe is starving. Hmm.

Polish writer OLGA TOKARCZUK came with an interpreter and writer MICHEL FABER to read from her work. She was great and pretty much 90% of the audience bought her books, “House of Day, House of Night” and “Primeval and Other Times”. Another Olga, this one Russian – OLGA SLAVNIKOVA – a few nights later, also with interpreter, did a fantastic future fiction event with Brit JAMES MILLER. This time I did the reading from her work without preparation but managed to struggle through. I’d sensed a strong link with the great Russian films of ANDREI TARKOVSKY in her sometimes dreamy prose and, hey, I was right, in that when the new novel, “2017” was optioned for film she asked them to find her a new Tarkovsky.

I’ve done a couple of blogs relating to crime-writers in Edinburgh for Shots magazine. You can find them, if you’re so inclined, at www.shotsmag.co.uk where shortly three months worth of my film reviews will go up. (Not my fault – I do ‘em monthly – technical problems at the mag.)

EDINBURGH'S FIRST WEEKEND

ELEGANCE IN SCIENCE, WHY MUSIC, ARNOTT, BARUTH & THE WICKER MAN

Edinburgh book festival kicked off in a heatwave for the first time in living memory. Great to see so many book-lovers between events sitting on the grass in Charlotte Square in the sunshine. IAN GLYNN left his laptop in his taxi en route to his event on ELEGANCE IN SCIENCE so arrived flustered. He gave a rather academic talk to a packed house and was rather phased by questions from the enthusiastic audience but the subject matter was fascinating. (And I was surprised to discover that he is 82 years old.)

The notion of elegance has long been applied to mathematics but Glynn carried it across to other scientific disciplines - although did point out that just because a solution is elegant doesn't mean that it's right. The event got me thinking about the now largely ignored series of once popular science/philosophy books by ARTHUR KOESTLER, including his Act of Creation in which he argued that there is no difference in approach between the scientist and the artist to their work: creativity in both comes from the same unconscious source.

PHILIP BALL was a bundle of energy the next morning (Sunday) explaining why we respond to music to another packed house. We ended, fittingly enough, discussing silence via John Cage's 4'33".

Saturday evening was Nerd Night for me as I discussed with journalist ALLAN BROWN the making of THE WICKER MAN. It's a film I've always wanted to be better than it is. I know the story of its troubled making inside out (compare the other great British horror film, WITCHFINDER GENERAL), as did BROWN, of course, hence the detailed nerdiness of the event.

Sunday afternoon I spent a pleasant few hours (onstage and off -) with JAKE ARNOTT and U.S. writer PHILIP BARUTH. On-stage we were discussing their historical novels - Jake's lively account of disgraced imperial hero Hector McDonald's encounter with Aleister Crowley; Philip's beautifully written literary thriller, The Boswell Brothers. Off-stage Jake was full of enthusiasm for his idea of a sequel to one of England's finest novels, one that has always had significance for him. Philip talked about his delirious novel The X-President, as yet unpublished in the UK, a satirical look at recent American politics through the career - imagined and real - of Bill Clinton. Philip also mentioned in passing that he was standing to be a senator in Vermont in five days...

And all around us, of course, authors ebbed and flowed in the yurt. CAROL ANNE DUFFY with former book festival director CATHERINE LOCKERBIE. JIM NAUGHTIE tapping furiously on his laptop keyboard. ANDREW O' HAGAN, as ever the best turned out male writer in the room, sharp-suited and fiercely barbered. GARY YOUNGE, EVA HOFFMAN, historian JEREMY BLACK. And walking down George Street, good old RODNEY BEWES, now the unlikeliest lad, looking solemn and a bit fierce and, across the road, SIMON CALLOW waving his arms and talking to himself as, presumably, he rehearsed his Shakespeare show. Much more later.

BETWEEN THE BALTIC & EDINBURGH

FROM CRUISE SHIP TO CHARLOTTE SQUARE

Last talk done on board the good ship Marco Polo, interesting journey through the night through the Kiel Canal - woke to the sight of cows in a field way below the height of the boat but right beside it - surreal.

The rear deck perfect place to prepare for my Edinburgh events - peaceful, the sea to watch slip by when brain hurting, green tea on tap.

First two events couldn't be more different - the elegance of science and The Wicker Man revisited. I spent a very pleasant couple of hours hearing the late Edward Woodward reminisce about making the film in the bar after some crime do - in Torquay once?

That old ham Christopher Lee is always going on about his part in the film but Woodward, as the uptight policeman, had the crucial role and pulled it off magnificently.

I remember seeing it when it first came out on the second part of a double bill at the Nottingham Odeon with "Don't Look Now" as the main film. Phew.

GREETINGS FROM ST PETERSBURG

IN THE BALTIC

I'm sweltering in a plastic tent on a piece of wasteland about half a mile from my cruise ship as it's the nearest free wifi place - it is, theoretically, a bar though I'm drinking heart-attack strength coffee - overhearing the most wonderful polyglot sounds as crew members from all over the world from a dozen or so cruise ships are skyping people back home.

I'm in St Petersburg - or, rather, outside St Petersburg - as part of my lecture tour on the good ship Marco Polo.

Russian authorities are fierce about letting people off the boats unless they are part of organised tours so I've had to lie a little to get to this hot-spot oasis.

It's 35C in St Petersburg - who knew that Dr Zhivago-town gets so hot in the summer it has mosquitos??

Of course, the main reason I'm online is to see what customers on Amazon are saying about my new novel, CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT - not officially published until 1 September but already being shipped by Amazon - and the first review is a 5-star one. Thank you, thank you...

I'm 50,000 words into book three, GOD'S LONELY MAN, which riffs on the first two and twists the tale I've told in CITY in nicely devilish ways. I'm just having so much fun, although I'm getting slightly twitchy about those two policemen over there giving me the hard eye and muttering to each other out of the sides of their mouths.

Peter and Paul Fort here I come?

THE LAST KING OF BRIGHTON & GOD'S LONELY MAN

SECOND AND THIRD OF THE BRIGHTON TRILOGY

My publishers are copy-editing THE LAST KING and I'm racing through book three, now titled GOD'S LONELY MAN. BORIS AKUNIN has been known to write a book in three weeks. I'm figuring three months...

THE FIVE TIBETANS - & BRUCE FORSYTH?

YOGA - BUT NOT AS WE KNOW IT

Astanga vinyasa folk comme moi have long known that if you don't have an hour to spare doing that form of yoga there's a 20 minute regime, more focused on getting fit than getting stretched, called the Five Tibetans.

Tibet has nothing to do with it since these are four classic Indian yoga positions plus one spin. The only difference is that, for fitness, you do them 20 times.

Turns out Bruce Forsyth swears by them. Good for him. Bad that all the moronic press have been making stupid stories out of it.

Some fitness bozo on GMTV the other morning was suggesting that what are known in yoga circles as the downward dog and the cobra - two very basic yoga positions, taught in every Adult Education yoga centre for the past 70 years - might be bad for your back. As are the GMTV sofas. Popular culture - I love it.

MAKING HAY

PETER JAMES, VAL McDERMID, JONATHAN COE & DAVID NOBBS ETC

Back in Brighton at the start of June for PETER JAMES's book launch on the Brighton Pier. The place was heaving - and full of cops, pathologists, CSI folk etc. The car Peter donated to Sussex police was parked on the pier, emblazoned with his name. Great event and two days later I was interviewing him on stage at Hay.

Hay was magnificent. This year I was just chairing fiction events, which I feel very comfortable with, so had a ball. The weather was magnificent and I was staying at Penrhos Court, a staggeringly beautiful Elizabethan farmhouse, where I could spend quiet hours editing The Last King of Brighton, the second of my Brighton trilogy, before heading back into the bustle of Hay.

And Hay was a bustle. All the holes-in- the-wall ran out of money sometime Saturday so there were hordes of people looking for dosh.

Authors aplenty, naturally. (I don't mean looking for dosh, though CHRIS EVANS was waiting patiently in one queue when the machines still had money, playing happily with his young child as the queue inched slowly forward.)

MELVYN BRAGG, my all-time favourite interviewer (and a great interviewee when he allows himself to be) nervous before quizzing ANTONIA FRASER about her memoir of Harold. TOM STOPPARD hanging out in the Green Room even when he hadn't an event. The great historian ERIC HOBSBAWM,born 1917, unsteady on his feet but sharp as a pin

I was sitting with VAL McDERMID when he walked in. She was part of a panel talking about AGATHA CHRISTIE which turned out to be a hoot thanks to her and fellow-panellist JASPER FFORDE. No surprise, perhaps, that the audience voted Joan Hickson the best Miss Marple and David Suchet the best Poirot. MARK BILLINGHAM was around that day too so it was a bit of a mini-crimefest.

JONATHAN COE and DAVID NOBBS were a delight to interview together. They're friends and admirers of each other's work but it wasn't a love-in. It was hilarious.

I made a point of visiting Baskerville Hall, down the road from Penrhos - because, as I told my listeners in Torquay some weeks earlier, the Hound of the Baskervilles was inspired not by old Dartmoor legends but by old Herefordshire ones...