It has been quite a week for anniversaries. Five years on from Alex Salmond being found not guilty of all the charges brought against him. Five years on from the start of Covid lockdowns. Both were significant events in the life and times of Nicola Sturgeon.

Improbable though it would have seemed then, and still does now, she marked them by taking to the stage at a comedy festival and declaring herself to be “in the clear”. This referred to the conclusion of a protracted police investigation which simultaneously resulted in her husband being charged with embezzlement.

It’s an interesting phrase, “in the clear”. By most people’s definition, Mr Salmond was certainly “in the clear” thanks to a verdict arrived at by a jury of his peers in Scotland’s highest court, after hearing all the evidence assembled against him.

Yet the ever-gracious Ms Sturgeon responded by saying: “Alex Salmond is innocent of criminality. But that doesn’t mean that the behaviour they claimed of didn’t happen”. Which, in retrospect, seems quite a piquant distinction for her to have offered to posterity.

Read more by Brian Wilson

Anyway, we also had the exciting news that Ms Sturgeon’s book is to be called “Frankly”. This seemed a slightly odd choice since everyone knows that when a politician starts an answer with the word “frankly”, he or she is buying time before embarking on a convoluted effort to avoid tricky questions.

While awaiting the literary event of the century, we are entitled to offer suggestions on what we might have wished Ms Sturgeon to write “frankly” about. And,........

© Herald Scotland