The Browser: Shhh… you know who, sisters

Cruggleton Kirk was the magical setting for Sara Maitland's premiere reading from A Book Of Silence. Surrounded by candles, with only the wind whistling through the surreal maize outside, she gave an exceptional discussion on the virtues of silence and the vices of silencing.

As well as claiming that mobile phones were the invention of the Devil, she gave a fervid and timeous reappraisal of feminism, without ever compromising her belief in it. "We thought it was about consciousness raising groups and multiple orgasms and eradicating world poverty. Well, it didn't work. I wasn't fighting for the rights of young women to get as plastered as men". As for how to find silence in the modern world? A G&T in the bath.

Labyrinths of the market

The irrepressible Alastair Reid gave the Magnus Magnusson Memorial Lecture and insisted he was giving a "speak" rather than a lecture. Frankly, he could have gone on for another hour without testing the audience's patience: this was subtle, gentle, scintillating conversation, ranging from the dangerous myths of fundamentalists to the supreme fictions of Borges. "Being alive", he said, "is constantly changing your mind". He also dropped in a Freudian slip that seemed eerily prescient, referring to "stock-breakers" rather than "stockbrokers".

The small family haggis

Princess Anne planted a tree and smiled very regally at the Wigtown Princess. It's a pity she didn't get along to Ian Kelly's incredible talk about his biography of Casanova – I never thought I'd spend an afternoon in a rain-lashed tent hearing about the trade in artificial penises in the 18th century. Quirky fact of the festival so far: England was the leading Enlightenment producer of condoms (made from sheep's intestines). To think that, at the same time, we were using the same thing as the skin of our national dish… And a special plain speaking award to Clara Weatherall, who was asked about what might persuade the Jardine and Matheson company to relocate to Scotland – "Tax". Likewise, Denise Mina reminisced about being stopped on Byres Road by a man who wondered if she was Denise Mina. "Yes", she said. To which he replied, "Your last book was shite". "Salman Rushdie disnae get that", she pondered, "he'd nibble the nose aff ye".

Step forward the Stress-spotter

At the Festival Dinner I fell into conversation with a charming chap, whom, it transpired, had worked alongside Irvine Welsh, right, during the laureate of Leith low-life's time at Edinburgh City Council. Welsh, it seems, held the prestigious post of Stress Management Officer. According to my dining companion, stress was an unheard of phenomenon among civil servants before the appointment of a management officer.

Bannockburn's hero 'just got a bit lucky'

As far as controversy goes, historian Andrew McCulloch managed a triple whammy: Robert the Bruce's coronation was tawdry, the victory at Bannockburn "over-rated" and most of his success was due to the English monarch's favourite, Piers Gaveston, distracting Edward II from the "Scottish problem". Just to add some more, he compared Edward I's treatment of Scotland as similar to the current state of Iraq: an easy conquest led to a difficult governance.