aye write! book festival

Liberties, Crime and Punishment
****
Blair in Fact and Fiction
****
A Celebration of Archie Hind
*****
Mitchell Library, Glasgow

LESLEY MCDOWELL

We were caught up in partings at the start of this year's Aye Write Festival. There was a sad farewell to Archie Hind, billed to appear with Alasdair Gray to talk about his 40-year-old novel, The Dear Green Place, and the beginnings of a new work, For Sadie - and an equally sorry goodbye, argued Helena Kennedy and panellists, to our civil liberties in the wake of terrorist attacks of the last few years. But there was a thoroughly delighted "good riddance" to Tony Blair from Martin Bell and chums.

According to Bell, wearing his now obligatory white suit (a never-ending protest, it seems, against sleaze in Parliament), Blair "had immense powers of self-deception - he lied to himself and he believed the lies". Along with Joan Smith, Helena Kennedy and Richard T Kelly, Bell was more than happy to disparage our former Prime Minister, but unusually - given that talks like this tend to take place in front of a largely partisan crowd - one brave soul from the audience did rise up to defend Mr Blair. It brought on a strange rush of support from Kennedy, who said Tony was a very "hands-on" father and "changed nappies more than his wife ever did". If only he'd stuck to the nappy-changing, some might say This panel followed neatly on from the night before, when, with the authoritative Kennedy, despite occasionally running away with herself, again a most able chair, Blair and his former sidekicks came in for more bashing and were accused of eroding our civil liberties. Indeed, A C Grayling warned us, liberty carries a cost, a risk. The philosophical aspects of that dialectic - security versus liberty - were muffled slightly by the lawyers on his left. Clive Stafford Smith specialises in defending death-row convicts and detainees at Guantanamo Bay, and his urging of us all to buy a special Guantanamo Bay soap from Lush ("buy one, set one free") was an interesting tactic to get attention for the cause, but did tend to rob the debate of its more complex issues.

I don't know if the festival can work on its sound system a bit more, but much of what Smith was saying was almost inaudible a large part of the time, and some of Alasdair Gray's highly entertaining reading of Archie Hind's work was difficult to catch, too. This last gathering, though, was precisely what a good session should be: moving, informative and revealing. There was a quiet, honest moment when John Linklater, pondering Hind's lack of success after his 1966 hit, considered: "There was a catalogue of people who should have been more supportive. Including me."

Hanif Kureishi,

Mitchell Library

KEITH BRUCE

***

Intimacy, the title of the explicit and controversial Patrice Chereau movie derived from the writings of Hanif Kureishi, was not on the agenda at this Friday-night event. The acoustics of the space seemed to unnerve both the author and his interrogator, Rodge Glass. Kureishi's reading from the opening of his new novel, Something to Tell You, was flat and uninspiring and his defence of a book that has had a mixed reception remarkably gutless. Its genesis sounded like something he would hesitate to recommend to his creative-writing students, and his claim to be happy that it is "shapeless and messy" was unconvincing.

Off the book, so to speak, things improved. In response to questions, he took a robust stand for liberal values - the fragility of which we all must be concerned about - and the richness of a multicultural society. It says much about the extreme rhetoric we are now accustomed to hearing that these views sounded unfashionable and even old-fashioned, but Kureishi, now in his fifties ("a terrible age to be"), was making no apologies for that. Asked about the anti-Islamist opinions of Martin Amis, he didn't miss and hit the wall. "I don't think Martin Amis has met a Muslim in his life, except Salman Rushdie," he said. "His moral vanity is vile, vacuous and obnoxious."


Louis de Bernieres
***
New Scottish Writing
****
Mitchell Library

LESLEY MCDOWELL

As his accompanying flautist pointed out to Louis de Bernieres (a bit too keen to sing Bob Dylan songs instead of reading from his latest novel): "The reason he plays so much - when you write one good book you can do what you like." De Bernieres fired back: "Eight good books, actually".

He has a strange aversion to answering questions from the public, preferring to read for the entire allotted time, as I've seen him do before, or in this case intersperse readings with music - most of which was good, but made you wonder if this was what his audience wanted. He did threaten to stamp on the head of anyone who asked him afterwards what he thought of the film of Captain Corelli's Mandolin. (I don't think he meant it.) It was a joy to see some local writers at Glasgow's book festival, especially when it involves new work from such writers as Louise Welsh, Janice Galloway and Anne Donovan. Welsh's is still at the gestation stage; Galloway's is due in August; Donovan's has arrived. I invoke birthing metaphors not because they're women but because it turned out to be such a theme of the session. All in all, this was the kind of impressive showcase that a good book festival is all about.

Children: win prizes for your school

  • To celebrate the Aye Write! Bank of Scotland Book Festival, Bank of Scotland is offering you the chance to win £500 of book tokens for your school.
  • All you have to do is write a 200-word review of a book that you have enjoyed and send it, along with your name, age, school and guardian's phone number to Aye Write! Bank of Scotland Book Festival, Material, Riverside House, 260 Clyde Street, Glasgow G1 4JH.
  • The winning review for both primary and secondary will win £500 of book tokens for their school. Two runners-up will win £125 of book tokens for their school. All winners will have their work published in The Herald and receive tickets to attend the Bank of Scotland Fireworks Concert on Sunday, August 31.
  • The Aye Write! Bank of Scotland Book Festival takes place in Glasgow until March 15. Full details available at www.ayewrite.com.

    So what are you waiting for? Get cracking!
  • Usual terms and conditions apply.
    For details, see www.theherald.co.uk.