Kirsty Wark’s diary: On the Caledonian sleeper, the new Donna Tartt, and a week of Edinburgh shows

There isn’t a Scottish politician in living memory who hasn’t been on the Caledonian Sleeper. I always imagined Donald Dewar folding himself up in his berth, he was so tall. He was notoriously sniffy about the company he kept in the bar and once recounted the horror he felt when — stuck in snow — he was forced to fraternise with practically the rest of the Labour front bench for 22 hours somewhere south of Carlisle. Journalists tend to be more comradely. The other night, I took the sleeper in tow with an old family friend, the BBC reporter Allan Little. Over Glenfiddich and cheese we exchanged scurrilous gossip and book recommendations before, just north of Watford, he made his long way back to the Edinburgh end of the train. On less sensible nights, say with Martha Kearney, I have stayed up long after my bedtime — perhaps even as far as Preston. I love travelling home by rail and I’m delighted by reports that bidders for the Caledonian Sleeper franchise are promising to turn it into a version of the Orient Express. If they lift the carpets in the cabins — from the floors and the walls — that’ll be good enough for me, but en-suite would be a marvellous 21st-century treat.

This week’s commute has been west to east, from Glasgow to the Edinburgh festivals. As the week has progressed I’ve been trying to read a proof copy of Donna Tartt’s new novel, The Goldfinch, ever more slowly in the vain hope that I will never have to put it down. Yesterday I made myself stop with a page-and-a-half to go of 771 pages. When I do come to the end, I think I’ll go right back to the beginning before I interview her in New York next week for a Review Show special.