Scottish Borders
garden filled with apple trees, a chapel (weddings by appointment), a modern mathematical maze, craft workshops, a tearoom and an impressive collection of fancy fowl (including ribbed rock bantams and silkies).
But it isn’t all tradition and folklorique activities. Just how much it keeps up with the cutting edge is shown by its brewery. Nothing is more fashionable now than craft beer – more usually assembled by bearded hipsters in the railway arches of our major cities. But Catherine Maxwell Stuart’s father Peter was an early adopter in the early Sixties, when in his attempt to make the house and estate viable, he discovered the long abandoned equipment for an 18th-century brewery. Its products acquired a following in the Real Ale boom of the 1970s and now travel the world winning awards. It was a pleasure between events at the Beyond Borders festival to enjoy a refreshing pint of Traquair Ale in the beer tent a hundred yards or so from its source.
The Beyond Borders International Festival of Literature and Thought has now been running each August at Traquair since 2010, and is only the most visible aspect of an organisation devoted to international co-operation and mutual understanding. It attracts a choice selection of national and international figures from the worlds of politics, diplomacy, media, literature and the arts. In 2017, Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s First Minister, took to the marquee stage to be interviewed by Tina Brown who was there with her husband Harold Evans who was interviewed by James Naughtie. Excellent panel discussions were had on race in America, transition at the White House, intervention in Libya and India’s future.
Since participants and audience number only a few hundred, its intimate scale means that over the weekend there is ample opportunity for easy encounters and creative discussions. And indeed that was one of the major functions of a country house in the heyday of aristocratic government.