EDINBURGH INTERNATIONAL BOOK FESTIVAL
Baillie Gifford Theatre

Mark Haddon has written all sorts of stuff, it seems – plays, poetry, children’s fiction and, of course, some adult fiction including the celebrated The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. (The latter, we’re told, has sold 10 million copies, which must make him a reasonably wealthy man.) Now he’s turned his hand to some very dark short stories into a volume called The Pier Falls.
 
Here in the Baillie Gifford Main Theatre at the Edinburgh Book Festival, Haddon was interviewed by publisher and editor Lennie Goodings. He came across well and is a good speaker with a wry sense of humour, and – prompted well by Goodings – he kept the audience fully entertained for the allotted hour. Goodings asked him about the persistent darkness of the stories, which feature death throughout, it seems. Haddon didn’t really argue, or give any reason why: they just came out that way, it seems. He read briefly from one, Wadwo, a modern retelling of the story of Gawain and the Green Knight, then talked about where these stories came from – it was interesting to hear that several began as abandoned plays. As a result he informed the audience that he has permanently put aside his playwrighting amnitions, but we’ll see if that really proves to be the case.
 
As a writer, publisher and editor myself, I found his section on writing technique by far the most interesting. He claims he doesn’t set daily targets – he’s wealthy enough not to have to – and he’s pretty obsessive about redrafts of his manuscripts. Even his wife doesn’t get to see anything that hasn’t been re-written twenty times or so; how I wish all authors shared his sense of pride in their work.
 
The hour closed with a few audience questions, none of which seemed to relate to the new book. One questioner harked back to The Curious Incident and seemed to be desperate to make a point about a celebrated court case involving an autistic Scot found guilty of a financial crime in the USA; Haddon patiently waited, then answered by saying that he didn’t really know enough about autism to make a comment, a response so impressively adept that it probably drew the biggest round of applause of the entire hour. The (for the most part) poor questions didn’t spoil the event, however, which was a thoroughly enjoyable and interesting hour spent in Charlotte Square. 

Guardian columnist Decca Aitkenhead entertained Edinburgh Book Festival audiences for an hour yesterday, talking primarily about her new book All At Sea. The book covers the events surrounding, and impact of, the tragic accident that led to the death of her partner Tony Wilkinson. Wilkinson, the father of Aitkenhead’s children, drowned in 2014 trying to save their older son while on holiday in the West Indies (the son survived).

Understandably, then, in conversation with the sympathetic and unobtrusive Steven Gale, she focused on bereavement, loss, memories and general ‘dealing with bad stuff’. Last year she was diagnosed with breast cancer, which naturally had her wondering if her two boys would grow up missing both parents, but although she seems physically recovered now there are clearly still emotional scars to heal. She’s a tall, thoughtful figure, more used to questioning politicians than to being questioned herself, and she gave the impression of blinking in the spotlight a little.

She opened by reading the impressive prologue of All At Sea in full, then talked about her partner Tony, contrasting his past – transformed from former drug-dealer and prisoner into degree-educated charity worker – with her own ultra-liberal middle-class background. But I thought the most interesting sections were when she took questions from the audience. She treated each as if it were a new question that she herself had never considered before (I don’t believe that) and gave the most considered answers: helping her son (only four years old) cope with the guilt of triggering the events leading to his father’s death; the extraordinary relationship between Decca and Tony; the coolness of her family towards her partner. This event might have talked about her cancer, but there wasn’t much time.

Overall, I found it an interesting event, albeit I found the whole story of Decca Aitkenhead and her family so bizarre that I couldn’t bring myself to believe that it was true. Except that it seems it is.

One last thing: my apologies for the poor-quality photo. Decca Aitkenhead has cut her hair, and looks quite different from all the photos you’ll see on the internet. The only available decent likeliness of her is the Book Festival photo available from Getty Images. They wanted £163.50 to allow me the privilege of using it here, so you’ll have to make do with this link to the Getty website instead.