Farewell to the bookfest that made Ullapool centre of the universe
Maybe it was the perfect way to leave the last Ullapool Book Festival – in disappointment.
Bumping into the lady– also at the bookfest – in the hotel corridor on our final chat the morning after, it seemed for her too, unable to get tickets, the last event was not to be.
The night before, heading to the venue in the hope that some miracle might have happened, maybe some tickets had been returned, the reality was locked doors and behind them presumably poet Don Paterson and musician Graeme Stephen about to carry on with the final event.
But maybe it was the only defence for the Ullapool Eight – the team which has been putting the festival together for 19 years– against all the potential wheedling and pleas of people who would have given anything to be there!
Still, it left the festival experience incomplete for me. But it did offer extra time to look back over it with a critical eye to try to pinpoint some clues about what made this festival such a special experience.
Emphasised by Doug Johnstone's latest book which literally makes Ullapool the centre of the universe, the Ullapool Eight had put together a diverse selection of events and authors that gave the audience a real window on the world, past, present – and probably future too.
For example, Saturday’s opening session with former BBC correspondent Angus Roxburgh, who briefly went on to work as a media consultant to the Kremlin itself, and whose book The Strongman profiles Vladimir Putin, was billed as giving “an insightful view” of the Russian leader.
As chair James Robertson read out a fuller version of the journalist’s career, it was clear how much expertise he would bring to his subject.
“A full CV I think you’ll agree!” James said.
“There’s no time for anything else!” Angus joked.
And time was the only enemy for this riveting view of what made Vladimir Putin tick – just not quite enough to look at the Ukraine invasion and what has unfolded. But would make a great follow-up one-off event for the future, perhaps?
But there were unforgettable snapshots from the leader’s life – as a youngster cornering a rat which pounced at the ‘tearaway’, how Putin described himself; his obsession with the KGB even though he was seen as unsuitable but ended up working for them later once trained as a lawyer; the vat of black mushy potato offered to be sent out to people starving in St Petersburg when he worked for the mayor after the fall of communism; the West failing to deliver on a deal to send food at that time that cost Russia $93 million … Angus speculating where that that money went; the Dacha Collective of friends and former Putin colleagues who got together to buy some traditional Russian summer houses [‘dacha’] and who now rule the country with him.
The questions from the bookfest audience were super-informed throughout the weekend sessions. In his, Angus was asked about our response to Putin in the UK. He agreed with the questioner’s suggestion that the Foreign Office had less expertise and knowledge than it once had – and he bemoaned the fact that in universities here Russian studies “have almost disappeared”. Asked for book suggestions that would help understand Russians better, Orlando Figes’s Natasha’s Dance was one Alex recommended.
By the end of the festival, a bulging list of possible next-read books went with you and would probably keep you going for the rest of the year …
Hearing Hamish Napier present his album The Woods once again – first heard at the Celtic Connections premiere pre-pandemic – his extensive added commentary of folklore, stories and an alphabet of Scottish trees he based the songs on, once again made you feel this music could happily have its own book with it! Joined by fiddle player Patsy Reid, Hamish on wooden flute and piano, had created unique jazzy-trad-contemporary classical compositions designed to capture the spirit of tree country.
Scottish poet and writer Michael Pedersen definitely captured and shared the spirit of his childhood alter ego who has given him the title for his next book of poetry, out this summer, The Cat Prince. In the session shared by Michael and poet Janette Ayachi the expert use of words to power up imagination was offered by both of them in confident reading of their own work – elevated to performance.
It was the reality of the pandemic that three guests bravely revisited on Saturday afternoon, allowing the audience inside their minds and their memories of the Covid 19 story in Scotland unfolding. Comparing Covid 19 to SARS back in 2002, GP Dr Gavin Francis, who has written a book – Intensive Care: A GP, A Community & A Pandemic – revealed that in the early days of the pandemic: “I was thinking ‘Is it another SARS?’. It was closed down very quickly, but [of Covid 19] this one seemed so crafty … thought it could go on for years.”
Jeane Freeman was health secretary and led the Scottish Government’s response and by the end of the session, was revealing when asked about the impact of the time on her that she didn’t quite know how living and working through the pandemic had really affected her yet.
Professor Linda Bauld OBE, who is now the Bruce and John Usher Chair in public health in the Usher Institute, College Of Medicine at the University of Edinburgh, was involved in research on Covid 19 as well as working with the media during the pandemic. Chair Ruth Wishart reminded everyone that Linda had always had lovely flowers behind her as we all got used to seeing our talking heads in their own front rooms in their TV appearances, as we got used to seeing the world from our own front rooms looking into the bookshelves of other people’s [Linda revealed her flowers were from the supermarket!].
This was a session where the chair led the talk through a wide-ranging look at everything from the impact of sending people out of hospital and into care homes and what Scotland did differently from the rest of the UK, to how the country would get ready to deal with a pandemic better next time, and on to how to improve the NHS and support it.
At the start, Jeane Freeman pointed out politicians – and included herself – don’t think too far ahead, and remembered in the earliest days hearing that, using modelling, it looked as if 80 per cent of the population could be infected by Covid 19 and four per cent might be hospitalised and what that would mean for the NHS. She talked about how shutting down services such as cancer screening would impact on people and said: “The choice is between levels of harm.” Later, she added: “There are millions of lessons from the pandemic and the issue of public health. Work is needed to reduce health inequalities. The people most affected are the people who are poorest and governments haven’t cracked this.” Adding in social care, the former health chief said: “If you are going to improve social care and public health we are thinking about a 10-year programme and it is hard for politicians to get their heads round that.”
Gavin Francis – who had shared the impact he had seen as a GP on issues such as young people’s mental health, and more broadly being, as Ruth put it, “at the sharp end” of explaining to patients government decisions such as halting cancer screening, said that the impact on him of his pandemic experience was – surprisingly to the audience who had just heard some of those challenging experiences - it had given him hope about the possibilities of human society. Homelessness in Scotland ended for a couple of years, he said, and loads of red tape had been cut.
For Linda Bauld, it changed her focus from global which it had been before to local and she hoped we didn’t lose the responsiveness the pandemic experience gave us and the NHS.
Jeane Freeman pointed out that during that time, a lot of layers of NHS bureaucracy and committees in decision-making were stripped away and devolved to the front line. “Why are we putting this back in place?” she said making it clear she thought that was a step back into the past.
The past was where Raja Shehadeh, the Palestinian writer, lawyer and activist who was returning to Ullapool Book Festival, was forced to look for his latest book We Could Have Been Friends My Father And I. The writer, who is also the founder of the Palestinian human rights organisation Al Haq was frank under the expert probing from chair and questioner Ruth Wishart, lancing the wound of Raja’s difficult relationship with his late father. Though both men were united in working for the Palestinian cause, Raja was distant from his father. So a pile of papers left behind after his father died, were shoved in a cabinet and only investigated by Raja when a random sight of his father’s name in a phone book, reminded him they were there and he became curious about what they might contain. His latest book is the result. “I had to overcome blocks,” he said. “I realised the similarities between us.” Over time, Raja had developed a closer relationship with his uncle before starting to look through his father’s papers.
Chair Ruth said: “To anyone reading your book, it’s clear you are so much more like your father than your uncle. This is like a love letter to your father. But unfortunately not one you wrote to your father when he was alive.”
Ouch.
But the writer agreed and shared his regret with us.
”I could have asked him so many things.”
It seemed the book helped him make sense of his own family life.
“It helped me understand things I didn’t before. They [his parents] lost everything and were impoverished.”
And as well as delving into the personal, Ruth’s questions widened the conversation into the history and tragedy of the Palestinian situation – and Britain’s part in it – from the viewpoint of Raja, someone whose life is devoted to improving things for Palestinians left in an apparently impossible situation.
The world’s response and changing attitudes to the region, came under discussion.
“You feel only international pressure can resolve this?” Ruth asked Raja, before they discussed the role of China in the situation, though Raja felt they couldn’t resolve things.
But he said, when asked by Ruth, about his hopes of Palestinians resolving their situation against the constantly encroaching Israeli settlements: “The most important thing is, we will win. We have resisted by staying put and we will win eventually.” Later, he added: “It will take time. If I will live to see the change, I don’t know.”
Ruth asked: “Is it your fear young Palestinians will say ’It’s a terrible reality but we will live with it?’.”
Raja replied: “They fight but many are unaware how to fight.”
And he highlighted the difficulty of protesting against the Israeli settlements. As Ruth clarified in a question: “People are worried about criticising Israel because they will be accused of being anti-Semitic?"
Positives included the fact that the United Nations is documenting what Israel is doing, which Raja felt was a major achievement. And for new generations "who wonder how we got here", Al Haq’s work means anyone can find out.
“I think that is important,” he said. “Colonisation works by colonising the mind.”
The session with writers Doug Johnstone and Kirstin Innes, chaired by Mark Wringe, brought the audience’s attention back to Ullapool – both writers had included the place that both of them know well, into their books.
Doug Johnstone’s freshly-published latest novel The Space Between Us is a sci fi with a first contact scenario involving a group of three, later four, random Scottish people who did their best to save an alien from the clutches of the authorities.
Kirstin Innis’s Scabby Queen had brought her feisty activist pop star, the lead character, to Ullapool. She revealed to the audience she had started the book in a bothy near Acniltibuie before she had her children. And that the tour that Clio went on with Neil, her friend, was based on a Neu Reekie trip organised in 2013 by Michael Pedersen (another guest at this final UBF, of course) which had gone to Oban and Fort William.
And it seemed the West Highlands was somewhere that Kirstin needed to help her write: “Part of my practice is that I need big sky and lots of open space so I can go walking.”
Kirstin revealed she is currently writing a musical based on Scabby Queen, so will Ullapool now be immortalised on stage? And Doug will definitely be returning his alien Sandy to the area – he had been exploring just north of Ullapool for research just before the festival started.
So though the Ullapool Book Festival itself may have ended, the promise of occasional one-off events from the same team, is just one way the legacy will live on.
And witnessing at this last-ever festival the community the event’s Ullapool Eight has created, curated and fostered, it would seem a massive shame to let it disperse entirely – criminal if all that curiosity, commitment and love of books and writers, just slipped away.
