It is “a matter of time” until Scotland becomes an independent country, crime writer and Yes supporter Val McDermid has declared.
The author said many of those who voted No during last year’s independence referendum were “feeling pretty profoundly betrayed” by events following the historic ballot.
Ms McDermid made the comments during a session with First Minister Nicola Sturgeon at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, drawing heckles from a few audience members.
Ms Sturgeon, a self-confessed “fan girl” of crime fiction, was asking the author about her writing, including her latest novel Splinter the Silence at the sold out event.
It did not take long before the subject of the referendum was raised.
The politician said she had been struck by references to the September 2014 vote in Ms McDermid’s book The Skeleton Road, written in the run-up to the ballot.
Hannah Ellis-Petersen
Tuesday 25 August 2015 16.49 BST
The titan of tartan noir talks about misogynistic trolls, Scottish independence and why this government is taking Britain back to Victorian levels of inequality…
Val McDermid is standing in St Cuthbert’s graveyard in Edinburgh, surveying the weathered tombs without much enthusiasm. This interview venue – my choice – came from the misguided belief that an author who has spent her life writing about murder might feel at home surrounded by graves. It turns out that the atmosphere of the place is completely lost on her.
I’m working class – I wouldn’t be able to go to Oxford now
“His talents adored the profession of his choice, his life recommended the gospel which he preached in every relation of life,” I read aloud off a 19th-century gravestone. “He died universally regretted.”
There’s a pause. “Well, he sounds like he was fun on a Saturday night,” says McDermid, who gives a short, sharp laugh and wanders off.
The Scottish novelist is not one to mince her words, either in her books or in person. Now 60, McDermid emerged in the late 1980s with her pioneering Lindsay Gordon series, which featured the “shocking’” inclusion of a cynical lesbian journalist as the main protagonist, and since then she has published dozens of bloody and suspense-filled novels, selling more than 11m copies around the world. Lauded by critics, in 2010 she was awarded one of the highest accolades in crime fiction: the Crime Writers’ Association Cartier Diamond Dagger for outstanding achievement. Her appearance at the Edinburgh book festival tonight, where she will be interviewed by Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon, sold out instantly.
Of late, McDermid has become something of a current-affairs fixture, speaking out on issues ranging from Scottish independence to the welfare state. A vocal supporter of the yes campaign, she moved back to her native Scotland last year after 40 years living as a “foreigner” in England, and has done little to disguise her disdain for both David Cameron and Scottish Labour since the general election.
Hannah Ellis-Petersen