The most impressive political leaders during the coronavirus crisis have one thing in common, one of Britain’s most popular novelists believes: they all read fiction.
By contrast, the leader of one of the most “shambolic” responses is reading endless biographies of men who have gone before him, the “queen of crime”, Val McDermid, lamented at the Edinburgh international book festival.
“I think the Westminster government has been completely shambolic over the Covid epidemic,” McDermid said. “We’ve been fortunate in Scotland because we have good communicators, clear communicators. It’s not that what we’ve done has been so hugely different, but it has been communicated clearly and I think people have supported that.”
Governments that seem to have done best “are led by people who read fiction” she said, naming Nicola Sturgeon in Scotland, Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand, Katrín Jakobsdóttir in Iceland and Sanna Marin in Finland among them.
“They are all people who read fiction. What fiction gives you is the gift of imagination and the gift of empathy. You see a life outside your own bubble. If you’re sitting there reading your endless biographies of Churchill or Attlee or whatever, you’re not looking at the world outside your window. You’re not understanding the lives of ordinary people who populate the country you’re supposed to be governing.
“My advice to any politician is: go and read a novel and you’ll understand the world better and you can imagine a changed world better.”
McDermid also welcomed evidence of growing support for Scottish independence. “From a personal point of view, that makes me delighted. I think Scotland could be a strong, small nation.” She compared Scotland with Denmark, New Zealand and Iceland – “small countries led by governments that are close to the people.”
McDermid was at the festival to talk about her latest novel, Still Life, which features Police Scotland’s historic cases unit and the no-nonsense DCI Karen Pirie. It is set in February 2020, so ends on the eve of lockdown. “Writing it from lockdown, looking back at where we had been just before that, was quite strange,” she said.
The book festival has moved online because of the pandemic and its events are free to access until 31 August.
The majority of McDermid’s novels have been set in the contemporary world, but now she is struggling to keep up with what’s happening in 2020, she told her interviewer, Joan Bakewell.
“Every day that goes by, something happens that you just go: “What?” This morning in the papers there was the story in America, trucks going round taking mailboxes off the street so people can’t post their votes. It’s extraordinary.”
Her solution, she said, is straightforward: her next novel will be set in 1979.
