Join me at the Edinburgh International Book Festival

PLUS: All the gossip from the Substack summer garden party

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NOTE FROM KENNY: This post is rather long. If your email provider cuts it off halfway, press “view entire message” or read in full on the Substack website or mobile app. Thank you for reading!

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The programme for the Edinburgh International Book Festival was published this week and there are two - count ’em, two - opportunities to join me for a chinwag.

First up is an event called Once Upon A Time In Holyrood. I’d love to tell you exactly what this will entail but the truth is we have not yet worked it out. Suffice to say it will be me and possibly some other people taking a look at that morning’s headlines and talking about Scottish political journalism.

This is part of a series of journalism-themed events at the book festival with the title First Edition. Each will feature journalists with a specific speciality. So there will be one for critics, one for business writers, one for local journalists, etc.

This is an early morning event. Well, 10am, which is early for the festival, where hangovers can be severe and mornings can be a delicate matter requiring large amounts of coffee, a greasy bacon roll and silence.

I promise I will speak softly.

I’m really looking forward to this and I hope you’ll consider joining me. The date for your diary is Thursday August 21. Tickets go on sale on Saturday June 21 at 10am.

This is a “pay what you can” event, an increasingly common arrangement, which I think is a great thing for the festival as it tries to engage a wider selection of the Edinburgh citizenry.

The second event is a couple of days later on Saturday August 23, at noon, when I will be interviewing the esteemed journalist and author Jonathan Freedland on stage.

I am a huge fan of Freedland’s columns in The Guardian. When I was a young man one of my journalistic heroes was Neal Ascherson, whose columns in The Observer felt like a moral guide to a fractured age.

For me, Freedland is the Ascherson of our times.

We’ll be talking about Freedland’s life and career, as well as his new book The Traitors Circle, described as “a true story of rebellion against the Nazis”.

I know what you are thinking: should there be an apostrophe in the title?

That will be my first question.

Again, tickets go on sale on Saturday June 21 at 10am. This event costs £15.50 (£10.50 concessions).

The home for this year’s book festival is once again the Edinburgh Futures Institute at Quartermile, on the edge of the Meadows. I admit I pine for the old days in Charlotte Square, but Quartermile has better toilets.

You can explore all 700 events, including 150 for children and families, here.

The theme for this year’s festival is Repair. Jenny Niven, book festival CEO and director, explains:

This year’s key theme of Repair starts from the belief that the brilliant ideas of writers and thinkers can help us repair a host of seemingly ‘broken’ things in our society, from the cycle of fast fashion and our relationship with the environment, to cultural reparations and the state of our politics. It’s a statement of hope and resilience, and an invitation for our audiences to think about what repair might mean for them.

Amen to that.

I hope to see you in August.

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A beginner’s guide to gardening

I was in London for a couple of days this week and so was able to attend the Substack summer garden party.

It was held in a private garden tucked away in Bloomsbury, near Russell Square. Very classy. There was a harpist playing, waiters circulated with trays of champagne, and the canapés were delicious, darling.

This was a lovely opportunity to meet Substackers who feel like old friends, given my familiarity with their posts.

It was also an opportunity to meet Substack co-creator

Hamish McKenzie

, with whom I had a lovely chat about music. He almost convinced me to listen to the new Arcade Fire album.

McKenzie recently did a TED talk which I recommend if you haven’t already watched it, in which he compares Substack to a garden. I admire his ability to be grounded and approachable while offering a vision that is generous and optimistic.

McKenzie must be under intense pressure in a Silicon Valley that veers between frathouse and madhouse. But he bears it with a degree of grace that is a credit to him.

I say this as someone who has been meeting very powerful people for decades through my work. I am not easily impressed and I do not get starry-eyed.

Substack is leaning into the garden theme. At one stage at the garden party a staffer shooting video was asking people what in a garden they most resembled.

I said the weeds that grow between the cracks in the paving slabs, that you pull out only to find the bastards have grown back three weeks later.

It was also lovely to meet the impressive

Farrah Storr

, head of writer partnerships for Substack in the UK and Europe.

When I started my Substack two years ago Storr was very helpful to me, talking me through the nuts and bolts of how best to switch my Twitter following over to Substack and how to form a strategy for going paid.

She is a force of nature.

Looking at these photos (taken by Jess Littlewood) I realise there were many people there I would have liked to speak to but didn’t get the chance. Next time.

Here are some more of Jess’s photos. See how many slebs and Substack favourites you can spot.

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