I wouldn’t normally take my wife and children to Dumfries and Galloway for the weekend, given the distance and the expense, but the organisers of the Wigtown Literary Festival offered to pay all our rail fares and put us up for the weekend. Wigtown was designated Scotland’s national book town by the Scottish Parliament in 1999 in an effort to breathe new life into it. At the time, it had one of the highest unemployment levels in Scotland following the closure of its two main employers, the creamery and the distillery. The literary festival has taken place ever since.
Almost the moment we crossed the border, a drunk buttonholed my wife. ‘You’re boo-ti-full,’ he said, as we sat on the train from Carlisle to Dumfries. Then, taking in our four children, he said, ‘Did all’a that lot come out’a youse?’ He seemed genuinely amazed, possibly because Caroline is about half the size of the average Scotswoman.
Dumfries station was a revelation. It was immaculate, far superior to all the stations leading up to it south of the border. Is this a reflection of the tens of billions that Labour poured into Scotland during its 13 years in office? According to the latest opinion polls, less than a third of Scots want to leave the union — hardly surprising given how much worse off they’d be without the English subsidy. The SNP claims that Scotland’s fair share of North Sea oil revenues would easily compensate for this, but I don’t imagine Alex Salmond will call a referendum any time soon.
By rights, the Wigtown Literary Festival should be a disaster. Not only is Wigtown extremely difficult to get to — it took us seven hours, the last 90 minutes in a minibus — but it’s in one of the least populous parts of the UK. In 2009, the International Dark Sky Association conferred Dark Sky Park status on the nearby Galloway National Park, the first area in Scotland to be awarded this honour, because there’s so little artificial light. Choosing Wigtown of all places to establish an international literary festival seemed typical of the Scottish Executive’s lack of commercial nous.
Yet it has succeeded against the odds, thanks to the pluck of the townsfolk. They’ve thrown themselves into it, setting up little shops in their front rooms, opening restaurants in their gardens and embracing all things literary. Wigtown now boasts more than 20 book-related businesses, including bookshops and publishers, and is making a brave stab at becoming the Hay-on-Wye of the north.
The Bladnoch distillery has reopened and, in addition to producing a decent single malt, hosts an annual talent contest in which the locals take on the visiting writers. The festival’s director, Adrian Turpin, was anxious to stress that my participation wasn’t mandatory — I was there to talk about how a writer goes about setting up a school — but I told him wild horses couldn’t drag me away from the distillery. If he was able to source an instrumental version of ‘She’s Not There’ by the Zombies, I would take care of the rest.
I arrogantly assumed that the local ‘talent’ would consist of a couple of skiffle bands and an amateur magician, but the good burghers of Wigtown knocked the ‘international’ authors into a cocked hat. The best we could muster was Tom Hodgkinson on the ukulele (about 100 times better than me, it must be said) and a stand-up routine by the Scottish author Alan Bissett. The townsfolk, by contrast, regaled us with comic poetry, a boy piper and a note-perfect rendition of a song from Phantom of the Opera. They also boasted an infant phenomenon in the form of Zoe Bestel, a 14-year-old who sang a heartbreaking ditty she’d written herself about unrequited love. She was a worthy winner. I told her not to take the first offer, no matter how good it is, and I hope she follows my advice. She’s destined for stardom.
Politically, I’m sceptical of state-led efforts to regenerate economically depressed regions through subsidies rather than tax breaks. The idea of a literary festival created by politicians using taxpayers’ money, as opposed to one that has just spontaneously emerged, fills me with horror. Yet it looks as though I’ll have to revise my opinion. The weekend I spent in Wigtown was one of the best experiences I’ve had at a literary festival — and I’m a battle-scarred veteran. It’s a charming, magical place in what must be the most beautiful setting of any festival in Britain. It deserves to thrive.
Toby Young is associate editor of The Spectator.
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