Like many people I find maps fascinating.  I've got two framed historic maps on my living-room wall and on my bookshelves a couple of dozen one inch OS maps from the various parts of the country I've walked in.  So Mapping the Nation was an obvious choice from the Book festival programme.

We got a fascinating review of how Scotland has appeared on maps from long ago to Google with a particular focus on four atlases from the 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th centuries respectively.  A project to reproduce them has recently been completed.

Amongst many titbits I learnt of the existence of Open Street Map which is the wikipedia of the map world. Anyone can update it and make his mark.

Man has been making his mark on the landscape for millenia and that's the subject of  The Firth of Forth: An Environmental History.  The decline of the oyster beds, reclamation of mudflats for farming, the pollution that kept salmon out but fed Icelandic ducks and all sorts of other interesting topics are covered.

The lead author, T C Smout, lives in Anstruther and relates how on one busy fishing day in the 19th century over 3000 telegrams were sent from the local post-office by fish merchants to their customers concerning that day's landings.  Today the well known and much lauded local fish and chip shop gets its supplies from Peterhead.

Gavin Hewitt is a well known BBC journalist and hundreds turned out to hear him talk about The Lost Continent.  It's a sweeping review of the European crisis and how it arose with lots of entertaining anecdotal asides.  Questions from the audience mostly centred on Britain's relationship and were dealt with optimistically on the whole.

Britain's relationship with Europe may be troubled but it's not a patch on the Israeli Palestinian nightmare.  The Ballad of the Burning Star is a fast-paced very physical theatre piece led by a cabaret style not quite MC drag artist.  You can see from that sentence that it's hard to pin it to a category.

It's a brilliant show that gives us the Israeli perspective leavened by satirical gibes and sharp portrayal of paradox and parallels between Jew and Arab. Notwithstanding its humour (as an example the one musician is addressed as Camp David) it ends in tragedy.  How else could it?

Back at the bookfest at the end of the day the good people who make Isle of Jura whisky take over the spiegel tent (one of the many that has sprouted since the first was planted not that many years ago) and provide free entertainment and a mini dram of the craitur to boot.   Last night some islesmen took the stage and sang a few songs.  The whisky helped me enjoy them.

I was also delighted to receive a festival bookshop £5 voucher in return for ticking a few boxes on a survey form till I got home and discovered I need to spend £40 to get £5 off.  I can do better than that if I buy from you know who.