Edinburgh International Science Festival – Oh JOY!

Today has been a happy day for my inner geek.

On picking up and flicking through this year’s programme for the EISF, I involuntarily let out a squeal of delight. This also caused me to confess my latest, and most wrong-indeed man crush to two complete strangers, who were interviewing me for a job. (And yes, I do imagine that my chances of getting said job were much diminished, if not destroyed outright, by my outburst.)

The object of my latest mental dalliance is Brian Cox, presenter of BBC 2′s ‘Wonders of the Solar System’. Man of science, physicist extraordinaire, and all round wonderful creature, he somehow makes talking about things that I will never be able to understand the most engrossing thing ever. Planets and physics, I’m talking about you. Sigh.

Yes, you have my full and undivided attention...

Anyway. What was I talking about?

Oh yes. The wonderful news is that this fine man of science is going to be in Edinburgh for some events during the Science Festival that include a screening of ‘Wonders of the Solar System’ at the Filmhouse on the 12th April at 8:30pm followed by a Q&A (gasp!), and a talk at Edinburgh University’s Informatics Forum, ‘Why does E=mc2?’ on the 11th April at 8:00pm. I will be most certainly be going to both. Yippedy yip yip, and indeed, hooray!

Now, imagine my delight then when, already quivering and almost frantic with joy, I turned the page to discover that Philip Hoare will be giving a talk called ‘The State of the Whale’ on the 9th April at 8:00pm (Informatics Forum, again). He’s the writer of two of my favourite books — ‘Serious Pleasures: The Life of Stephen Tennant’ and ‘Leviathan’ — and an absolutely astonishingly gifted writer at that: stylistically sublime and bursting with erudition, with a surprisingly emotional quality that I find irresistable. I cried in the street reading ‘Leviathan’ — and it was only the first chapter proper, how shaming! He is, quite simply, one of the greatest writers around.

In Awe of the Awesome

Lawd! Walking through Leith Links at this point, festival programme clutched in hand, I was ready to lie down among the crocuses and joyfully expire… what looked like three rabid dogs running wild off the leash only just prevented me from doing so.

In Awe of the Awesome, or: Who I want to be when I grow up

What's written on his t-shirt? Damn right!

Philip Hoare: not only a man of discerning taste — he’s written books about Oscar Wilde and Noël Coward (the second best thing to come out of Teddington, after myself) — but a man remarkable for two reasons:

1. After a rather misguided decision to write my Advanced Higher English personal study on “Moby Dick” (which resulted in the creation of a parallel text within my copy of the book through the green inked marginalia that detailed the complete mental collapse I suffered in trying to read the bloody thing), only this particular man could make me voluntarily pick up and read another book about a whale. (Incidentally, it’s called ‘Leviathan’ and is wonderful. Please read it).

2. He wrote a rather magnificent book called ‘Serious Pleasures: The Life of Stephen Tennant’, which is the best biography I have ever read, if not one of the best works of non-fiction I’ve ever come across. Having recently acquired my own copy, it sits in pride of place on my mantlepiece. ‘Serious Pleasures’ is a wonderful book about an equally wonderful, though curious, man who flitted from party to party in the 1920s as one of the brightest of the Bright Young People, had a turbulent love affair with Siegfried Sassoon (whom I also adore), liked to sprinkle gold dust in his hair and spent his life time talking about a novel, Lascar, that he never finished; only to become a virtual recluse and spend — purportedly — the final years of his life in bed. Written in an exuberant and eloquent style, Hoare brings Tennant wonderfully to life, and at least once a week I find myself sitting down with a cup of tea to delve into the delights of the book at random.