Shetland

I'm off to Edinburgh's Book Festival, as I write. It's 30 years old and the biggest of around 40 such bookfests around Scotland, stretching through the year and from Shetland to Wigtown, Scotland's national book town. They have been a big success in bringing authors and readers together, and showing the appetite for public debate on the issues tackled in books and beyond. Making that link is one of the key ways of selling books these days.