Borders Book Festival reviews: Rory Bremner, Janey Godley & more, Harmony House, Melrose

There was no shortage of highlights at this year’s Borders Book Festival, writes David Robinson

Rory Bremner has been at this comedy business for a long time now. “Ever since Rishi Sunak was in short pants,” he explains. “Mind you, he still is.

“Our sixth PM in eight years. If someone is in hospital with a brain injury, what’s the first thing they’re asked? Exactly. And if you’ve been in a coma for two months, you’d have missed Liz Truss altogether.”

His impressions were as perfect as his timing, one of the King so accurate that when King Charles phoned Stephen Fry to invite himself round for Sunday tea, Fry told him “Oh f*** off, Rory.”

Rory Bremner PIC: Lloyd Smith

There was no shortage of other highlights. The incomparable Jane Godley (chaired with all the requisite sass by Val McDermid) fully earned that rare thing, a Borders standing ovation.

The finest political analysts in the land (Peston, Ponsonby, Naughtie et al) pored perceptively over the electoral runes.

The 14th Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction brought shortlisted writers from as far afield as Trinidad and Tobago (the winner, Kevin Jared Hosein), Canada and South Africa to read from their work.

For me, though, the best event was one marking the centenary of Eric Liddell’s “Chariots of Fire” race at the 1924 Paris Olympics. It had everything: Allan Wells on why he dedicated his 1980 100m gold medal to Liddell, Eilidh Doyle on mental preparations for a race – and, from the audience, Liddell’s trainer’s grandson and a woman born in the Japanese internment camp where he died in 1945.

Scots actor Ian Charleson once told event chair and Liddell biographer Sally Magnusson that when he played him in the film, he found it hard to copy the way Liddell ran, arms flailing and his head so far back he couldn’t see his feet.

He wasn’t religious, but he had to run on faith. So, in these absurdly perilous times for literary sponsorship, do book festivals.