Kirsty Wark is nervous — a sight not often seen, certainly not on Newsnight. “I’ve just handed in the first draft of my second novel,” she says, as we perch on high stools at the tiny bar in Mac & Wild, the Scottish restaurant near the BBC in central London. “I’m weaving together two timelines, so far quite inexpertly — a 1940s story set in Galloway and a contemporary one in New York, two places I know very well and love very much. It’s going to be a lot of work.”
Wark loves work. She hasn’t stopped since graduating in Scottish studies from Edinburgh University in 1976 and joining the BBC as a researcher, rising to producer, then editor and, since 1993, Newsnight presenter. She was one of the first on the scene at Lockerbie, and it’s perhaps easier to say who she hasn’t interviewed — her pivotal moment came in 1990, when she confronted Margaret Thatcher about her toxic reputation north of the border. Who would she most love to get her hands on now? “Obama,” she says, without a second’s thought. “Michelle. What she’s sacrificed in these eight years and what she’s gained.”
While we’ve been talking, she has been scanning Mac & Wild’s epic whisky list — classic Wark multitasking: “I’ll have the 10-year-old Arran.” The barman leaps into life. “Just a single — I don’t want to fall asleep at the theatre — and lots of ice.” Ice? “My palate has changed as I’ve got older. I used to drink Laphroaig, but — boompf — it hits you in the back of the neck. I’m not having it with Coke, that would be heinous. Arran for you, too?” I don’t disagree. Wark’s charm is that you don’t want to.
“We laid a cask down in 2007 and it’ll be ready next year, so we’ll have hundreds of bottles. We’ll be drowning in it,” she says. The single malt is mellow and light. It’s nowhere near as dramatic as the mountainous isle off Scotland’s west coast, where Wark holidayed as a child and where she set her impressive debut novel, The Legacy of Elizabeth Pringle, an intergenerational tale based partly on her family. She wrote most of it on the train to and from Glasgow, where she lives with her husband, Alan Clements, director of content at STV.
“By the way, they serve great whiskies on the Caledonian Sleeper. Thank God this book’s done all right, I was terrified.” Really? “Yes, with Newsnight there’s a team and I can do my homework, but the novels are just me.” So why take the risk? “I grew up in a house full of books and I always wanted to write. After the army, Dad went into law and Mum was a teacher, although she didn’t work after having my brother and me. Every second Saturday, they took us to the library, and I did the same with [my children] James and Caitlin. We shouldn’t be closing libraries — books are vital.”
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Cooking is the other private passion Wark has taken public, appearing on the Great Comic Relief Bake Off and only narrowly losing Celebrity MasterChef. “My childhood was classic — cauliflower cheese on a Tuesday, liver on a Wednesday. I remember, at 14, going to Connemara on holiday and having soda bread and mussels and thinking, ‘Oh, my God.’ Mum experimented as we got older — she went to cordon bleu night classes, as you do — but I don’t think I had an avocado until I went to university.”
Wark is in the studio more than the kitchen, though, and does a lot of eating out. “Obviously, if I’m on Newsnight, I can’t go out, so I have breakfast at the Riding House Café, or walk down to the Wolseley. In Glasgow we hit the Finnieston strip. It didn’t exist five years ago and now we’ve got the Crabshakk, the Butchershop and the Gannet — I’m having my next birthday dinner there.”
Writing and cooking combine deliciously in her cookbook obsession. “I’ve got shelves of them. Nigel Slater is a favourite, but I like Gordon Ramsay’s Just Desserts and Moro, and foodie novels like A Moveable Feast. My characters are always eating, because the really important stuff happens round the dinner table. I love meals where everybody cooks a course — I’m not proprietorial about my kitchen.” But there is no doubt that it’s her kitchen.
So, if her next novel is even more successful than her debut, would she give up journalism? “No. I didn’t know how much I would enjoy writing on my own — I was maybe slightly scared of it. Now I’m scared to lose it. But I need the balance, I’m lucky to have that.” She is. And the nice thing is, she knows it.
The Legacy of Elizabeth Pringle by Kirsty Wark (Two Roads £7.99)
The drinks
Kirsty was very disciplined and had just a single measure of 10-year-old Arran. She tucked into a charcuterie board and especially loved the cured ox heart.
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Damian tried the Arran (without ice). He then enjoyed a ginger laddie, made with Bruichladdich Port Charlotte and Classic Laddie whiskies, oloroso sherry, ginger, sweet vermouth, orange peel and barrel-aged bitters.