A promising start to Nicola Sturgeon’s career as interviewer, when she took to a stage last night to interview her literary hero, Val McDermid. For the most part the first minister performed with her customary aplomb. But a bookish audience is not necessarily the same kind of crowd as one might find in the once smoke-filled rooms of Nationalist politics.
So when the FM took to teasing out McDermid’s political views — not too difficult since the miner’s daughter was a high-profile “yes” voter in last year’s referendum — she almost lost the room. At first McDermid’s view won applause: it was “self-evident” that Holyrood was better than Westminster at running Scottish affairs.
But the FM would persist: “Do you still think we’ll be independent?” “Only a matter of time,” replied the author, but already the heckles were starting. “No!” came a cry. “Talk about the books!” came another.
McDermid ran on: “An awful lot of people who voted ‘no’ are feeling pretty profoundly betrayed.” “No, we’re not,” came a voice again.
“Well some of you are,” grumped Val. Suitably chastened, Nic and Val turned the page and returned to matters literary.
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T hey’re punching the air in “Modern Two”, the old Dean Gallery, where The Amazing World of MC Escher has been going like a fair all summer. Escher, who died in 1972, was a brilliant geometrician, whose drawings of endless staircases and gravity-defying waterfalls became hugely popular in the 1960s and 1970s. More than 28,000 people have already paid at the gate, the biggest turnout at the gallery since Van Gogh drew 38,000 visitors in 2007 — though Escher still has a month to run.
The gallery’s director, Simon Groom, said he was thrilled the exhibition had become “the show to see”. Sotto voce, he tells the Diary: “A large number of mathematicians have been in.”