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:

Sir Vince, who was speaking about his new political thriller Open Arms, admitted he had not anticipated the renewal of his political career when penning the book.

He said: “I thought the chances of my getting back into parliament, let alone becoming the leader of my party, were rather remote. So the book is perhaps less discreet than it should be.”

However, there are areas, thankfully, where discretion has been observed.

There is a relationship and there is a man and a woman and they fall in love and so on, but there were some politicians who slightly spoilt their reputation by being a bit crude in that area. There was a novel by Edwina Currie I think went down that road, and it doesn’t. It is quite discreet.

The Times (£) has a go because he doesn’t mention the Lib Dems very often. You can imagine what they would say if there was a Lib Dem saving the day on every page.

“I didn’t put them [the Liberal Democrats] in the novel in quantity,” he said. “They weren’t marginal in the book because I think they are marginal,” he pleaded. “Please don’t misinterpret their absence.”

A scan of Sir Vince’s novel reveals four mentions, in passing, of his party in the first 200 pages, a quick flurry in the middle referring to a Labour councillor’s crusade against them, and one more mention in the next 150 pages.

His casting of the party that he now leads into the wilderness after a swift reversal in his own political fortunes has highlighted the pitfalls that await politicians who turn to fiction. Or literary fiction to be precise.

Open Arms by Vince Cable is published on 7 September and is available for pre-order all over the place. Here is the link to it on Waterstone’s.

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings