On our way to the Boswell Book Festival, travelling through the mid-May sunshine, my partner and I happened to chat about spies. And so imagine our surprise – on entering a packed marquee to listen to Duncan MacMillan and Lachlan Goudie – to hear that the former had been taught at the Courtauld Institute by no less a sleuth than Anthony Blunt. As well as espionage, the word 'spy' insinuates other ways of seeing. Coming from an old French word, 'espier' meaning 'espy', from a Latin root, 'specere', 'behold, look', it suggests the whole gamut of watching; from hidden glance to attentive gaze, from broad intelligence to deep detective-work. And the Boswell Book Festival provides opportunities to espy aplenty in every sense of the word.
Inspired by Ayrshire's James Boswell of Auchinleck,
The World's Only Festival of Biography and Memoir is all about subtle, penetrative observation. A literary gem, providing a platform for biographers, memoirists and readers to come together and celebrate the beauty of the genre, this year's contributions included talks from Val McDermid, Barbara Dickson, Simon Kuper and Sally Magnusson, amongst many more.
The programme is curated to ensure a compelling mix of established literary figures as well as fresh perspectives, catering to a wide range of interests and aspirations. Director Caroline Knox: 'The ongoing events of today make us ever more appreciative of the writers, journalists and experts who record, report and reflect on the often-dangerous situations around them'. A Festival of 'lived experience' collides many worlds; this, the 12th Festival opened with a fundraising event for Ukraine. Ayrshire writer, Catherine Czerkawska and Ukrainian Liudmila Proniakina in conversation with Georgina Adam, with proceeds to Rotary Ukraine Crisis Taskforce.
The Festival was held at Dumfries House, an architectural gem near Cumnock in East Ayrshire. Set in 2,000 acres of wildflower-studded forest, rolling fields and formal gardens, the Palladian building was designed by John Adam and Robert Adam, completed in 1759. Eventually it came into the possession of the Marquess of Bute who put it up for sale in the early 2000s.
Removal vans had already arrived to load up its Chippendale furniture, much of it bespoke, to take to Christies to be auctioned. But after a campaign launched by the now chair of the Boswell Book Festival, James Knox, with the conservation charity, SAVE Britain's Heritage, the house, its collections and the estate were saved for the nation by the then Prince of Wales. Since then, it has become a standard bearer for heritage led regeneration projects across the UK.
The removal vans were unloaded and the furniture was taken back indoors. It turned out to be a shrewd investment. The value of a single bespoke Chippendale cabinet runs into many millions.
In a room hung with tapestries, bouquets of pastel flowers spilling over the carved white marble mantelpiece, we heard Allan Little in conversation with Kapka Kassabova, discussing her new book
Elixir.
Kassabova grew up in Bulgaria but now lives in the Highlands of Scotland. To write her book, she returned to Mesta, a mountainous region in the southwest of Bulgaria, where she stayed in what she calls the 'Valley at the End of Time'. Here she talked with women and men who pick wild herbs and plants. The plants are sold on, becoming part of a global multi-million dollar industry while the workers themselves are often paid the equivalent of $6 a day for their labour.
Little is a skilled interviewer, a very public spy for us, the audience, probing Kassabova to reveal her work. But during the course of the conversation he, too, spoke with passion about his own experience of reporting on the war in Sarajevo and the break-up of the former Yugoslavia.
Afterwards, my partner and I lay on the grass in the sunshine and espied the crisscross plumes of planes. We walked through the bluebell woods, speculating on the names of the little wild white flowers with the obloid petals interspersed amongst the blue – but this was a job that needed not human but artificial intelligence. Out came Google Lens to tell us: Greater Stitchwort. (Not only this, but AI informed us that the flowers' scientific name is
Stellaria holostea, from the family
Caryophyllaceae, and that they have, apparently, an 'explosive seed-dispersal mechanism'.)
Heading to our next talk, we sidled past the long queue waiting to hear
The Great British Sewing Bee's judge, Esme Young, talk about her new book,
Behind the Seams; and past the queue for James Ferguson and Raja Shehadeh. Ferguson's
In Search of the River Jordan describes how the issue of water has been weaponised; while Shehadeh's beautiful book,
We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I, marries politics with a moving personal portrait.
I had been looking forward to hearing Don Paterson in conversation with Sheena MacDonald but the former books editor of
The Scotsman, David Robinson, took MacDonald's place. He introduced Paterson as not only fluent in poetry but, now, as a brilliant memoirist too. Paterson, on the other hand, said he'd rather have been a great musician than win his fame through writing.
Although
Toy Flights describes, at times, difficult and painful periods of Paterson's life, Ian Rankin has said parts of the book are 'laugh-out loud funny'. Donning a thick Dundonian accent as required, Paterson read excerpts. Meanwhile, Robinson listened to the wordsmith beside him on the stage with a look of such benevolent attentive appreciation on his face that, spying on the spy, I found it a joy to watch.
But back to MacMillan and Goudie.
'Everybody knew Blunt was a spy,' said MacMillan, adding that he himself was distantly related to another member of The Cambridge Five, Guy Burgess. Clearly it was common knowledge that, amongst the scions of the establishment, foreign agents were on the loose.
Chaired by James Knox, it was the first talk of the day, relatively early on a lovely Saturday morning, and some, like my partner and I, had travelled a longish journey to get there in time, but the marquee was packed and rapt with the kind of attention that comes when people know they are in the presence of something special.
'A full house. For fine art?' MacMillan went on. 'This has got to be a first.'
Visual arts reviewer for
The Scotsman and Emeritus Professor of Fine Art at Edinburgh College of Art, MacMillan was talking about his new book,
Scotland and the Origins of Modern Art, while painter and broadcaster Goudie was discussing his
The Story of Scottish Art. Both books, in their own way, explore Scottish identity.
An entertaining and engaging speaker, Goudie was generous in his praise of MacMillan, acknowledging his debt. As a practising painter himself, he reminded us that the moment when paint, brush and the artist's intention come together on the canvas are unique and irreducible, containing a humanistic magic that cannot be quantised in pixels. Nevertheless, those very pixels treated us to a rich and evocative digital display on the screens that faced the audience as we saw works amongst others by Allan Ramsay, Vermeer, Henry Raeburn, Arthur Melville and Goudie himself.
In the foreword to MacMillan's
Scotland and the Origins of Modern Art, Alexander McCall Smith makes the point that when we look at paintings we often only see the things that we are looking for and 'often fail to notice other things that may be present'. (Like the famous Invisible Gorilla Test, demonstrating inattentional blindness.)
MacMillan, in his deep detective work, has directed his attention on centuries of Scottish visual art, espying and interpreting the philosophy that nourishes its heart.
Beginning with Ramsay's 1766 portrait of Hume resplendent in a bright red jacket, leading to an image from 1902 by Phoebe Traquair of
The Progress of a Soul: The Victory and young girls playing, the book is beautifully produced. With its illuminating images, MacMillan investigates not only Scottish visual art but also the creative and philosophical literature that has formed Scottish culture, including its medical innovations. One of the connecting threads he traces is 'the feminine principle in the creation of civil society'.
Focusing on Thomas Reid's philosophy of common sense and his theory of perception and expression, he discusses Scottish Enlightenment ideas about the supremacy of the imagination. Reid's ideas were taught in Paris, published as
La Philosophie Ecossaise.
A principle premise of
Scotland and the Origins of Modern Art is how the evolution of Scottish Enlightenment philosophy and art in France led, in turn, to Modernism. By interrogating the history of art, MacMillan uncovers ideas hiding in plain sight. It's a must read.
Kate Robinson is an artist living in Glasgow
