00:00This is Janet Christie from The Scotsman speaking to Nicola Sturgeon, MSP for Glasgow Southside
00:05and former First Minister and Queen of Crime Val McDiarmid. They will be appearing at a special
00:12festive Edinburgh's Christmas In Conversation event in the Company of Books on the 15th of
00:18December at the Assembly Rooms on the Mount. So thank you for joining us. I wonder if you can tell
00:24us about this In Conversation event, what will it be like?
00:29Well, it's kind of grounded in the fact that what brought us together in the first place,
00:33what was the ground of our friendship really, is a love of books. I didn't know Nicola until
00:39she interviewed me for the Edinburgh Book Festival in her first year as a selector,
00:43as First Minister, but we bonded very quickly over our taste in books, our interest in books,
00:50and we thought it would be a chance to talk about it to more people.
00:53Yeah, I mean, Val and I, when we get together over dinner and, you know, a modest amount of
01:00red wine, we tend to talk about books a lot that dominates the conversation. So we'll talk about
01:06the books we're reading, the books we've enjoyed, the books we've hated. Often we'll agree,
01:11sometimes we'll disagree, and that's more fun when we disagree. And a couple of times we've
01:17thought, you know, it'd be fun to open this discussion to a bigger audience. We've done
01:23on-stage events together before, usually me interviewing Val about her latest book,
01:28and I think we've got a good dynamic. And we thought it'd be good to open up our conversation,
01:34but also talk to other people about books and the books they love and what books and reading
01:40mean to them, and actually have a conversation about books and reading that is accessible,
01:46because often chat about books can feel quite exclusive and inaccessible to people who are
01:52maybe not passionate, enthusiastic readers like we are. So it's really, it's just fuelled by that
01:58love of books, love of reading, and a couple of chance conversations
02:02have led us to this event in December.
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