Did Nicola Sturgeon really have to go with an English publisher?

For many years Stephanie ran it almost single-handedly from its 16th-century offices in the Canongate. In so doing, she became something of a literary legend.

Part of her legacy – along with an abundance of oft-told anecdotes – is the Canongate Classics, a paperback collection of timeless works by the likes of Robert Louis Stevenson, James Hogg, Walter Scott, Robert Burns, and many more. Most notable of all was the publication of Alasdair Gray’s Lanark.

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As Byng reminded the throng, there were more than a few near-collapses as the company finances teetered on the brink. On one such occasion in 1994, he stepped in and bought it from the receivers.

Since then, its fortunes have steadily risen, with one international bestseller after another: Yann Martel’s Booker Prize-winning Life of Pi, Michel Faber’s The Crimson Petal and the White and the unauthorized autobiography of Julian Assange.

In a prescient move, Canongate also secured the then Senator Barack Obama’s memoir Dreams From My Father and its successor The Audacity of Hope.

Other memoirs and diaries have followed, including the Alan Rickman diaries, Truly, Deeply (disclosure: edited by my husband Alan Taylor), yet at no time in the last 30 years has Canongate followed a narrow path.

Part of its personality is how eclectic and unpredictable it is. There’s no telling what it will publish next.

One book that will not appear on its list, however, is Nicola Sturgeon’s forthcoming autobiography. Pan Macmillan recently announced its acquisition of the most eagerly anticipated political memoir since David Cameron’s For the Record.

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Although as yet nothing is known of its contents, other than that it will be “deeply personal and revealing” – it is scheduled for publication in 2025 – of one thing we can be certain: Sturgeon will not be splashing out on a shepherd’s hut in which to write in the back garden. And, no, I am not suggesting she will be using the SNP’s motorhome.

At the moment, of course, her book is a story without a final chapter. Until the ongoing investigation into the SNP finances is concluded, nobody – including Sturgeon – knows how events will unfold.

Yet whatever does eventually transpire, I doubt this will be a work of hubris, air-brushing or self-aggrandisement, sins of which far too many of the political classes are guilty.

As a genre, such autobiographies are generally one-week wonders, responsible for the post-Christmas glut on charity bookshop shelves. I know a writer who built her house from remaindered books. Almost certainly a rollcall of British parliamentarians will be holding up her walls.

Tony Blair’s A Journey, which was derided for oversharing details about his marriage, was described by one reviewer as “written in a chummy style with touches of Mills & Boon”.

The least said about Alex Salmond’s referendum diary, The Dream Shall Never Die, the better; it was dismissed by political commentator Alex Massie as “the worst book of its type I have had the misfortune to read”.

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Cameron’s deadly dull self-exculpation was an exercise in damage limitation that fooled no-one; likewise Bill Clinton’s well-written My Life. The Promised Land, the heavy-going first volume of Barack Obama’s projected two-part memoir of his time in the Oval Office, was outstripped by his wife Michelle’s chatty memoir, and I haven’t heard anyone drumming their fingers while awaiting its sequel.

It is into this august yet often turgid company that Sturgeon will soon be stepping. Like many others, I cannot wait to read what she has to say. The years of her time as a politician, and especially as First Minister, have been tumultuous: the runaway success of the SNP, when independence seemed tantalisingly close; the sensational trial and acquittal of her erstwhile friend, the former First Minister Alex Salmond; the horrors of the Covid 19 pandemic; and now the police inquiry into the party’s finances, during which she and her husband have both been arrested but not charged.

A novelist putting such a plotline in front of their publishers would be accused of stretching credulity.

Given Sturgeon’s love of reading, we can expect that her recollections will be well and thoughtfully written. What I had also hoped, however, was that she would choose a Scottish publisher.

Although the original firm of Macmillan was founded in 1843 by two brothers from Arran, it long ago ceased to be a Scottish outfit. Pan Macmillan is among the world’s most powerful publishers, with the sort of clout and selling power no company north of the border can compete with.

Among its authors are Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton, not to mention the likes of the Bronte sisters. Its list is exhaustive and sometimes illustrious, which will no doubt help burnish Sturgeon’s literary credentials. Even so, I am disappointed.

For a politician who has dedicated her career to the cause of independence to go to a London-based publisher seems both contradictory and odd. The optics certainly are not good.

To those outside the country, it will be read as confirmation that there is no-one on her home turf fit to publish a world leader’s memoir. Admittedly the pool of contenders is small, but she could nevertheless have opted for one of them. Doubtless the deal was negotiated by an agent, seeking the best terms and conditions. All the same, it feels like a snub.

Sturgeon has never shown any interest in making millions, and until now she has been a dauntless champion of her homeland. Placing her memoir with a Scottish house would have sent a message of confidence and pride in an industry which, in recent years, has needed all the support it can get.

Instead, her choice reflects the age-old tradition of heading to London, where it would seem the streets are still paved with gold.