Diary – 1 October 2004

Literary festivals, as usually reported, sound like pop concerts, with happy audiences and complacent writers, but that is only part of it. They are not alike. You may need wellies for one and sunscreen for another. Nor are the provisions alike. In Edinburgh this year my publishers forgot to send the book I was promoting, or rather selling. When I complained, much more in sorrow than in anger, there was a flurry of concern, and then the report came, ‘But it wasn’t us, the fault was in Glasgow.’ That’s all right then. But HarperCollins is usually very good, and often better than good. Edinburgh may be a place too far, but in China, where I went for the British Council, wherever I went my books were there too — showers of them. It is all a gamble and one has to see it as part of the fun and wonder what will happen this time.

The most glamorous literary festival is in Mantua. Off I set, with no idea of its splendour, but not far from Milan the pilot of the British Airways plane, in the matey way they have when disorder threatens, said that a bit of smoke had been noticed and we were going to divert to Geneva, to be on the safe side. How well we all did behave, Brits and Italians; a philosophical boredom is what we showed: Oh lord, here we go again. In Geneva a couple of hundred of us were isolated in a transit place, without information. Later it turned out that the cell-phoners among us had had contact with Milan, and were being told ‘Another hour.’ ‘No, two hours.’ ‘No, nine o’clock.’ ‘No…’. Three hours passed and the engineers told us that on no account should we dream of getting back on the plane, confirming our suspicions about the bit of smoke.