Am back in Edinburgh and speaking at a Yes Scotland meeting on Friday 24 May at the Columcille Centre, 2 Newbattle Terrace, Edinburgh at 7pm.

This is my first entry as a speaker into the referendum campaign, and I am excited – and nervous – about it. I have of course given quite literally hundreds of speeches, on every continent, in the last nine years. I have spoken before official committees of the Council of Europe, European Parliament, Arab League, UK Parliament and Scottish Parliament. I have spoken at a great many of the world’s most prestigious universities. I have spoken to crowds in the tens of thousands.

That has been almost all on the subject of universal human rights, international legality and peace, about which I am so passionate I abandoned a well-paid career to serve those causes. At the Columcille Centre on Friday my audience will not be remotely the largest, or most intimidating, or most potentially hostile, I have ever faced. But I will be speaking in the cause of the freedom of my own nation. That brings a lump to my throat and butterflies to my stomach. And so it damn well ought.