Last night I went to the Cheltenham Literature Festival to hear Vince Cable speak. I had expected the talk to be about his book on the credit crunch, “The Storm” , but it turned out to be more about his memoir, “Free Radical”, to be published on 1 November. This sounds like a must-read.

He had spoken earlier in the evening as one of a panel (along with  Stephanie Flanders from the BBC and John Micklethwait of The Economist), so didn’t go into as much detail on the banking crisis as some in the audience would have liked to hear.

It wasn’t the first time I had heard Vince speak on “The Storm”. At Conference I happened to be in the room – not having left the previous lunchtime fringe meeting – when it became clear that something involving books was about to happen. Not overcome with enthusiasm for the walk back to the conference centre and the next session, I hung around. It turned out to be Vince, Paddy Ashdown and
Shirley Williams talking about their new books. Unfortunately, there had been a complete SNAFU on the publicity side – no advertisement or listing had appeared in any conference document, there had just been a notice on the LibDem Image stall (which I had visited and not noticed). So in a room with seating for 300 and space for many more to stan, there were fifty of us spread around.

It was the most amazing treat. Vince explained that he had written his book in order to understand the credit crunch himself. Paddy started off with moving recollections – described as the best and worst days of his life, one after the other – of a visit to Bosnia in the early 1990s, and later told a familiar story concerning casework on a cold night while he was still a prospective parliamentary candidate. Shirley read an extract from her book and then ran through a few highlights.

Vince warmly recommended Gillian Tett‘s book on the credit crunch, which he said had helped him to understand it.

Incidentally, while I have given links to the books on the Amazon website, I must encourage you to buy them (if you wish to) from a local bookshop that really appreciates your custom.

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