A long lunch, with Simon Hoggart

Simon Hoggart is the Guardian's parliamentary sketchwriter. Last week he came to Edinburgh to talk about his memoir, A Long Lunch, which charts his career observing the daily workings of Westminster. We sent Charlotte along…

Originally Simon Hoggart wanted to call his new book Booze, but his clever wife persuaded him that A Long Lunch might be more apt. Revealing a passion for wine drinking, Simon recounted amusing stories with famous authors and politicians, often making fantastic impressions of his subjects. The audience lapped it up, responding with laughter and cheering woops at the saucier tales.

After university Hoggart became a journalist with the Guardian newspaper in Manchester before moving to their Irish base some years later. Following three years in Ireland he requested relocation to London and, in particular, to the politics department where he is today. Through his work he has met every Prime Minister since Harold Macmillan. 

Delivered with impeccable comic timing, Hoggart spoke of many different amusing incidences, such as the time when prolific poet W H Auden sat in his family kitchen and discussed in detail the greatness of Kenwood mixers with his mother. 

Another anecdote was set at the Westminster press gallery Christmas party, where the children of journalists and from the nearby school were invited and the guest of honour was Margaret Thatcher. There was a young boy crying in the corner. The then Prime Minister asked the child what was wrong, to which the boy replied: ‘They’ve given me blancmange, and I don’t like blancmange.’ to which Thatcher responded: ‘That’s what parties are all about, eating food you don’t like.’.

When questions opened to the floor, Simon revealed that phone hacking is very wide spread, especially in the tabloids. He questioned if the MPs were using it as revenge for the expenses scandal and believes that it could eventually collapse the entire Murdoch empire as we know it. 

Hoggart ended the event with a detailed description of David Cameron’s bald spot, comparing it to a goujon of plaice from Marks and Spencer, much to the amusement of the audience.

Art and artifice

This year we have invited a number of guest bloggers to write about the Book Festival. Today’s post is by Pippa Goldschmidt who came to see Philip Ball. Pippa is part of the ESRC Genomics Forum Writers team.

I went to Philip Ball’s talk based on his book ‘Unnatural’, about the fears and myths provoked by the processes of creating life through assisted conception, such as IVF.

Ball listed eight myths of what he called ‘anthropoeia’, the art of making people, and showed how those myths are frequently based on anxieties about the nature of human identity itself. If we have dismissed the idea of a soul as a physical entity, then how do we define our so-called uniqueness? Where does humanity enter the scientific process?

There are of course different ways of ‘artificially’ creating life, probably a continuum from the low-tech turkey-baster approach, to pre-implantation genetic diagnosis; where embryos created by IVF are screened for genetic disorders. And different myths attach to different processes. Some relate to the anxieties about the process apparently replacing the ‘natural’ method, as articulated by the Catholic Church’s claim that artificial insemination turns the domestic home into a ‘biological laboratory’. Others are concerned about the genetic content of people created through these processes. If their DNA has been manipulated, are they real people? What is the status of clones?

It’s clear that literature has been one of the most powerful ways of rehearsing and expressing these fears, but often the literature is more nuanced that its popular representation. Countless media stories about IVF invoke Frankenstein, but Ball argued that the main message of the book is often lost; the Creature is at his most human and gentle when he is living near and interacting with humans. And the Scientist is at his most inhumane when he is isolated from other people. It’s in the immaterial relations with each other that our humanity exists, not in the chemical formulations of DNA, or the processes by which we are created.

Originally from London Pippa used to be an astronomer. Now with an MLitt in creative writing from Glasgow University she has had several short stories published. Much of her writing is inspired by science and she is currently writing a novel about a female astronomer. Visit her website for more information www.pippagoldschmidt.co.uk.

Backstage at the Book Festival: The Event Tent

Beyond the bookshops, the decking and the venue tents, there is a whole world of backstage nooks and corners that we use to keep the Festival running smoothly.

One of these spaces is known as the Event Tent, and it's the central hub of activity in Charlotte Square Gardens during Festival time. The Event Tent is the first tent to go up before the Festival site is built, and it’s the last to come down at the end. It’s where we keep much of the stuff we need for the daily running of the Festival (exciting things like ladders, tools and vacuum cleaners) and it’s also home to lots of us Festival staff when we're not busy looking after authors and customers elsewhere on site.

If you thought that working at the Book Festival was glamorous, take a peek at these exclusive pics of the Event Tent to get a glimpse of what it's really like...

The hot desks. We're not quite sure why they're called that, because they're in a tent in Scotland so never actually hot. They are however, conveniently located next to the window which is great for sneaking a look at passing authors whist checking your email (or writing a blog post).

The coat rail - essential for storing the variety of outdoor clothing required for working in the random Scottish weather.

Snacks! An Event Tent essential. (And not just any old snacks, but homemade snacks, our favourite kind.)

The relaxation corner. Notice how empty it is. Also, please take note of the beautiful artwork (by an anonymous artist) on the whiteboard to the right of the picture, drawn especially to match the furniture.

Silence goes faster backwards

This year we have invited a number of guest bloggers to write about the Book Festival. Today’s post is by Pippa Goldschmidt who came to see Tom McCarthy. Pippa is part of the ESRC Genomics Forum Writers team.

It seemed appropriate to go and listen to Tom McCarthy talk about Orpheus, the first poet, on the opening day of the festival. Actually, this was more of an audio-visual event than a straightforward talk. The author of the Man Booker Prize short-listed ‘C’ and founder of the semi-fictional International Necronautical Society showed clips from Cocteau’s film Orphée, as well as a video of Kraftwerk performing their song ‘Antenna’.

The Orpheus myth (one of the oldest of the Greek myths) tells how Orpheus was the first poet and musician, making the animals and trees dance to his music. After his wedding to Eurydice and her subsequent death, Orpheus goes down to Hades to fetch her back to the land of the living. He is allowed to do so, on condition that as he leads her away, he doesn’t turn back to see if she is following him (perhaps a reminder to him that he is not in control). But as they make their way up to the surface, Orpheus starts to doubt if Euridice is following him, and turns to look. That backward glance banishes her down to Hades, and Orpheus, having remorsefully foresaken all other women, is torn from limb to limb and his remains scattered over the land and sea.

So, according to McCarthy, what we do when we create poetry is gather up the pieces and broadcast them again in a never-ending cycle of reception and transmission. Even the word ‘broadcast’ has its roots in agricultural practice; it means the spreading of seed.

Cocteau’s Orphée shows the poet being inspired by listening to messages from the dead transmitted over the radio, illustrating McCarthy’s point that transmission and reception of poetry and literature are symmetrical events; the idea that writers create something out of thin air is more of a myth than the Orpheus story. Rilke’s writing  ‘Sonnets to Orpheus’ in a single month is a classic example of the poet channelling rather than creating from a vacuum.

And, although McCarthy didn’t mention this, perhaps we also know this from physics. The same antenna can be used to transmit radio waves as well as receive them. A couple of years ago, the radio telescope at Jodrell Bank, normally used to receive information from stars and galaxies, was used to transmit poems to the Moon.

At one point, the talk was interrupted by a deafening roar from planes overhead, taking part in the Tattoo. Pure noise, or pure transcendence; it seemed appropriate.

Originally from London Pippa used to be an astronomer. Now with an MLitt in creative writing from Glasgow University she has had several short stories published. Much of her writing is inspired by science and she is currently writing a novel about a female astronomer. Visit her website for more information www.pippagoldschmidt.co.uk

Debate: The End of Money?

Our popular debate series looks at familiar things that we take for granted but which are threatened by change. Our reporter Charlotte sat in on Monday's debate which explored the theme of money

Debate:The End of Money?

Globally, countries are experiencing troubling financial times; worryingly this includes the USA, UK, Greece and Italy. On Monday evening the Book Festival took the time to question the future of money in its current form, and if we may in fact be nearing the end of money. Esteemed Scotsman Executive Editor Bill Jamieson chaired the debate with participating authors Ian Morris, Stephen Armstrong and Julie Hill.

Money will be redundant

Ian Morris proposed that presently money has three main uses: the medium of exchange, a unit of account and a score of value. Morris, who wrote Why the West Rules-For Now, went on to argue that we won’t need money in the future because the human body is fusing with machinery. Soon we will all pay for things, communicate and even surf the web by a silicon chip implanted in our arm or head. According to Morris the Six Million Dollar Man has become a reality but will cost a lot more than six million dollars. The roles that money currently has will be redundant in the future.

Price is the problem

While Stephen Armstrong wasn’t particularly impressed with Morris’ argument he agreed it was a true vision in science fiction. According to Armstrong, who wrote The Super-Rich Shall Inherit the Earth, price is the issue, not money, and in particular the price of debt is a huge problem for America and the UK. Stephen urged us to move towards a dawn of thoughts exchange and said that in order to to reach this place without money we need to remove the current price differential. Armstrong commented: ‘The feral rich won’t pay taxes and the feral poor can’t pay taxes’.

An issue of resources

Julie Hill, famed for her book The Secret Life of Stuff, didn’t agree with either gentleman. Hill believes that so far we have failed to price resources, particularly the natural ones that underpin our economy. Looking towards the future Hill is concerned that there won’t be sufficient natural resources for basic sanitation and food for our ever-growing population by 2050, and questioned what money will mean to us if we don’t have the natural resources to provide the solution.

Questions from the floor

Encouraged by floor questions the panel went on to discuss many of the issues relating to the influence of money today, and how we could perhaps move towards an equal society. Armstrong advocated that there is often less trouble in countries with higher wages and suggested that to help us become more equal we could raise the present UK wage bill. Hill commented that, although the health and science of a country was often linked to income disparity, the fear of crime often strengthened relationships with many poor societies rating themselves very happy and content because of their solid family and social interactions. 

The audience questioned the role of corporations in the end of money. Ian Morris believed that corporations as we know them presently will disappear in the future because the huge engines of economic growth will not be needed when we have implanted silicon chips inside our bodies. Armstrong highlighted that we should be more concerned with private equity funds than corporations because they are wealthy investors that buy businesses cheap and sell them on for high profits. Additionally they help to finance political parties and don’t have to bow to public demands. Most importantly the private equity funds pay little or no tax which will not help debt reduction. 

So What does the end of money mean?

To end the debate a brave audience member asked the panel: ’What does the end of money mean?’ Ian Morris stated: ‘if technology continues to advance why would we need money if we are living on a super technology highway?’ and claimed that, in many ways, we are already there. When we buy things on our mobiles or the web money is moving from buyer to seller conceptually, not physically. Julie Hill believes that the implications of creating a cashless economy would be enormous.

The Revolution Will be Followed by a Signing Session in the Adjacent Tent

This year we have invited a number of guest bloggers to write about the Book Festival. Today’s post is by Ken MacLeod who came to see Alan Warner. Ken is part of the ESRC Genomics Forum writers team.

This year's theme for the Edinburgh International Book Festival was decided last year. With what was described at the launch party as uncanny prescience, the theme was 'revolution'. There was a definite echo of that in the voice of the first author I heard on Saturday: Alan Warner, Edinburgh University's newly appointed Writer in Residence. Catchily if clunkily billed as 'Sopranos author does trainspotting', the event, chaired by Zoë Strachan, centred on Warner's reading from the MS of his forthcoming novel The Dead Man's Pedal. It's about a lad who by mistake becomes a trainee engine-driver on a West Highland railway line in 1973-74: a moment when Britain seemed to edge closer to a pre-revolutionary situation than at any time before or since - though not quite as close as some of Simon's more radical work-mates think, as they trade banter in the station hotel bar. Warner first came to prominence with Morvern Callar, which like his later The Sopranos and his current The Stars in the Bright Sky was hailed for its brilliant evocation of young female voices. In the section he read, the man from Oban showed a similar - and on the face of it less surprising - fluency with a range of male voices, from political badinage over a pint to pained recollection of war's absurd horror between swigs of the hard stuff. But catching the cadence of the industrial work-place, and indeed of working-class socialism, isn't as easy as it seems or as easy as it used to be - not that many have tried.

Answering questions from the chair and the audience, Warner explained that The Dead Man's Pedal takes place in the same 'place of the imagination' as his other novels set in and around 'The Port', a town which is not quite Oban. The place has become so vivid over the years that on visiting Oban he now finds himself wrong-footed by his own imaginary geography. His approach to writing is not to attempt a 'perfectly crafted 220-page Booker novel' but - following his exemplars Beckett and Kelman - to give his characters scope and freedom to develop, to say their piece; and then to edit down the long manuscript that results. He begins on more than one novel at a time, and works until he knows which is the one that demands to be finished - for which approach he's thankful he has an understanding editor with a steady nerve. Asked why the sentences in his later novels were easier to understand than some of those in his first, Warner wasn't sure he agreed, but added that he'd found that writing doesn't get easier if, as he does, you set yourself harder challenges as you go along. This bracing directive was followed by a reading of a passage he said was as close to its real-life source as he could make it: an account by the narrator's (and Warner's) father of a grotesquely needless loss of four lives in an armoured car in an Italian ditch. This sobering account was lightened by the interruption of loud explosions, from the fireworks opening the evening's Military Tattoo.

'Eighty-eights' Warner said, cocking an ear. 'I'd recognise them anywhere.' Even the most realistic writing has to go beyond experience. 

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Born in Stornoway, Isle of Lewis, Ken has been a full time writer since 1997 authoring thirteen novels, including The Star Fraction (1995) and Intrusion (forthcoming, 2012), plus many articles and short stories. His novels and stories have received three BSFA awards and three Prometheus Awards, and several have been short-listed for the Clarke and Hugo Awards. In 2009 he was a Writer in Residence at the ESRC Genomics Policy and Research Forum. Learn more from Ken’s blog The Early Days of a Better Nation.

A celebration of new writing talent

One of the great things about the Book Festival is seeing all the fresh new writing talent that comes through the doors every year. There’s nothing better than discovering a great debut novel, or sitting in an event listening to a writer at the very start of their career and who might, just might, be the next famous face on the literary scene.  

This year is no exception. The programme is packed with great first novels, as well as some fantastic international works of fiction translated into English for the first time. To celebrate this profusion of new writing the Book Festival is once again running its award for new novelists – the Newton First Book Award – the winner of which is selected by a public vote. This year there are 47 titles up for the award. All 47 authors are appearing at the Festival and you can buy their books in the bookshop in Charlotte Square Gardens. So pick your favourite and place your vote online!