It may be dismissed as ‘elitist’ by some, but Edinburgh’s book festival has a special place in Chris Mccall’s heart
My dad was not a football man. He never checked results and probably attended fewer than two dozen games in his life. The worst aspects of fan culture – the excessive drinking, the general boorishness – appalled him. But he did have an appreciation for what was left of the game’s Corinthian spirit. Ask him what team he supported and he’d reply Berwick Rangers. He was not one to read the sports pages, yet took great enjoyment from columnists who wrote about the black humour found in the nation’s lower leagues.
He had a similar contradictory stance towards books. While my dad read several newspapers and subscribed to various magazines, he seldom finished a work of fiction. Yet he eagerly looked forward to Edinburgh International Book Festival each year in Charlotte Square. For him, the chance to hear leading writers talk about the issues of the day in a convivial atmosphere was a privilege to be enjoyed. You didn’t need to be familiar with the complete works of Ian Rankin to appreciate him answering questions from a lively evening audience.
In a former life as a comedy critic for one of the festival publications, I sometimes heard the book festival disparaged as the most elitist of the big Edinburgh cultural celebrations. The Fringe sprawls across the pubs of the capital’s student heartland, but the book festival contents itself with a small corner of the New Town. There is no more douce a venue than Charlotte Square.
Attend a stand-up comedy performance and the majority of people – from the performer on stage to the staff collecting tickets – is likely to be wearing jeans and a T-shirt. Spend a pleasant afternoon milling around the various tents that make up the book festival and the odds of spotting someone in a well-pressed linen jacket and a choice fedora will shorten considerably.
The festival, which attracts 230,000 visitors every August, has been based in Charlotte Square since it was launched in 1983. Last year, the organisers were forced to deny that its future was threatened by rumoured plans to relocate along George Street. The square is an architectural masterpiece and the damage caused to its gardens each year is substantial.
But it would be a great shame if the book festival was forced to leave its current environs. It offers an oasis of calm while the wider city is in the grip of festival madness. There is nothing to stop anyone wandering into the gardens and enjoying a free seat outdoors. Tickets to a show are not a prerequisite of sampling the event’s unique atmosphere.
This year I will be missing all this for perhaps only the second time in my adult life. My dad, a resolute supporter of the event from its inception, died suddenly in February. The festival was our father-and-son outing, a tradition we continued even after I left the capital for Glasgow. In my younger years, he had patiently endured several matches at Easter Road until I was old enough to make the trip myself. The festival was a trip we could both enjoy, with no risk of an inept Hibs performance spoiling the day.
I’m unfamiliar with the 2018 EIBF line-up as I could not bring myself to read the latest edition of the weighty festival guide which crashes through my letter box each spring. The new brochure promptly arrived just weeks after my dad’s passing. Grief-stricken by the very sight of its brightly coloured front cover, a reflection of the event’s innate optimism, I dumped it in a kitchen cor-