I failed miserably when it came to getting Book Festival tickets this year. Starting a new job on the day the tickets came out meant that there were none left by the time I was able to look them up.
Sadly that meant that I missed Vince Cable’s session on his new book, Open Arms, which will be published on 7th September, so you’ll have to rely on the accounts of others.
Susan Mansfield in the Scotsman says he was a congenial Book Festival guest:
“I’m proud of the book, and I wish I’d done it earlier,” Cable said. His protagonist is an “independent-minded” female Conservative MP who becomes a Cabinet minister. “When I was a Cabinet minister, the two things that kept me sane were my weekly dancing lesson and having a pile of novels by the bed.”
He made for a congenial Book Festival guest, free from the bluster and bombast of many in his line of work. Whether talking about his book, or about wider political issues, he was thoughtful and considered. Predictably enough, the conversation quickly left the novel behind.
On Brexit, Cable offered hope to remainers, saying there is a “significant possibility” that it might not happen. With Corbyn’s Labour Party “on the same page” as the Conservatives with regard to a hard Brexit, he hoped that rebels from both main parties could join forces with the Liberal Democrats and the SNP, and “the thing could unravel”.
In the Independent, he is quoted as saying that the book is “less discreet” than it might have been had he thought he would resume his career:
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