Edinburgh Festival

There are few better locations to resist la rentrée than the wilds of Exmoor. The late August heather and gorse. The hidden coves. The bracken and this year’s superb crop of blackberries. Then the rain. So much rain (though of course the reliably incompetent South West Water still has a hosepipe ban in place). The only blot on the landscape remains Damien Hirst’s ill-conceived 65ft statue of ‘Verity’ – a flayed pregnant woman, with her innards on show, standing on a pile of books and holding a sword – which dominates Ilfracombe’s harbour. It exemplifies the worst of public-private art, lacking any meaningful connection to the history or culture of

I’m doing a show in Edinburgh for the first time in a long while. It’s fun, although I feel I’m basically wearing a scent called Elder Statesman (I’m hoping it smells more of ancient leather and authority than incontinence). I get stopped in the street a lot, including by some people who have not mistaken me for Ben Elton. One of the two shows I’m doing, at Assembly Studios at lunchtime, is a Q&A based around the themes in my books Jews Don’t Count and The God Desire. The idea comes from doing loads of literary festivals, where I tend to get interviewed by a luminary for 50 minutes and then there