Profile: Roy Dalgleish, curator of the Linlithgow Book Festival

One man’s dream proved we can’t have too many book festivals, writes David Robinson

BOOK festivals are all about stories. At Linlithgow in three weeks’ time, there will be any number of them swirling around the Masonic Hall on the High Street. Stories from writers who are proven masters of the art, such as James Robertson, Janice Galloway, Christopher Brookmyre and Alan Bissett. Stories, too, from people whose own lives

have been packed with drama, like former Baltimore homicide detective Kelvin Sewell, or at the heart of politics, like Tam Dalyell. But sometimes a book festival itself has its own story, one just as much worth telling. Who starts them up? Why do they do it? Why has Scotland proportionately more – 43 – than any other country on the planet? Up and down the land, these days almost in spite of rather than because of Creative Scotland, still they rise. Why?

Ask Roy Dalgleish why he started the book festival at Linlithgow six years ago and he’ll tell you about the day

he and his wife Jan saw Doris Lessing at the Edinburgh book festival seven years ago. When the house lights

darkened at 11:30am, August 15, 2004, they had the best seats in the main tent, right on the front row. Lessing

was on the stage just feet away. By then, Jan was in a wheelchair, paralysed from her neck down from the motor neuron disease that had ravaged her body for the last four years. Her mind, though, was button-bright. Those four years of progressive paralysis were also spent bringing up their two sons and taking an Open University degree. Friends

came in to help her turn the pages on her textbooks or take dictation for her essays. She had finished her degree by the time she died in April 2005.

“She was tremendously brave and stoical about what was happening to her,” says Roy. “She never complained. She was really quite a remarkable lady. I always thought so anyway, but even more so in her final illness.”

That last book festival event he and Jan had seen together crystallised something in his mind. Even before

then, he’d thought that Linlithgow should have its own book festival. He’d mentioned it to Jan, and she had said it was something he should do. After she died, he talked to their friend Gail Boardman, co-owner of Linlithgow’s Line Gallery, about the idea. She agreed. Something Must Be Done. It was. They started in 2006. The first festival had Allan Massie, Bashabi Fraser and Ian S Wood on the bill. Ken McLeod couldn’t make it, but passed on a letter to Iain Banks, who could. At first Dalgleish – who chaired many of the events himself – felt a bit odd inviting writers to come to the festival. “I’m just nobody phoning out of the blue, they’re going to be thinking, I’m just some nutter. And even as a chair, I’m not a professional, I’m just some guy who would normally be in the audience who just happens to be up on the stage.”

Dalgleish is 54, and works in the microbiology lab at Forth Valley Hospital in Larbert – a job he has done (albeit in different hospitals) since he was 17 – analysing infections and determining which antibiotics would be of most use to the medical staff. He is, however, widely read in Scottish literature, history (he also did an Open University majoring in history and followed with a master’s) and crime. Unsurprisingly, his programmes reflect that.

This year’s programme is the first to feature any non-Scottish writers. Kelvin Sewell, a detective in the homicide department of the Baltimore Police – the real-life unit which features in the TV drama The Wire – will be talking about his work with award-winning American investigative journalist Stephen Janis, who co-wrote his book Why Do We Kill? Of the rest of the programme,

Janice Galloway and Christopher Brookmyre have both been to previous festivals, but Dalgleish is looking forward to welcoming them back. James Robertson, talking about his And The Land Lay Still, an epic novel of modern Scotland, and Alan Bissett, who will be talking about his latest novel, Pack Men, are both new to the festival.

What, I ask, would his dream event be? “I know it’s complete fantasy, but if I could pick a writer from anywhere in the planet, it would have to be Philip Roth. Now I’m not daft: I know he’s not going to come to Linlithgow, but you did ask. Among Scottish writers, we’d love to have Willie McIlvanney. Talk all you like about Hogg and Stevenson, but contemporary Scottish crime fiction starts with Laidlaw.”

Perhaps you could ask Ian Rankin to interview him, I suggest. “Oh, Ian Rankin. I’ve been a fan since Hanging Garden. I’ve asked. I know he’s very busy, but one of these days, who knows? And Alexander McCall Smith, of course, we’d love to have him too …”

There’s a story here, isn’t there? A last festival in Edinburgh with a wife he so clearly adored – even a stranger

like me can just tell. And a new festival without her. But sort of with her too.

“Years ago,” he tells me. “I was talking to Jan when she was ill. She knew I had these ideas – about going on to do my master’s, and about the possibility of a book festival in our town. And she said to me, ‘There are so many things you want to do. When I’m gone, you’ve got to do them.’ ”

• For full programme and to reserve tickets, visit www.linlithgowbookfestival.org Tickets are available on the door; from The Line Gallery (238 High Street, Linlithgow, EH49 7ES, 01506 670 268), cash or cheque only, with SAE or additional 50p for postage; from the Linlithgow Bookshop or the Little Owls Bookshop.