Nicola Sturgeon begins giving her account of husband's embezzlement

The Listowel Writers’ Week is more used to political intrigue on the pages of fiction.

But the arrival of Nicola Sturgeon just days after her estranged husband admitted embezzling more than £400,000 from the SNP put this literary festival in a quiet corner of the south west of Ireland at the centre of an ongoing real-life political storm.

This was the perfect stage for the former first minister of Scotland to begin putting her side of events.

Key Points

Nicola Sturgeon has spoken for the first time since her husband admitted embezzling more than £400,000 from the Scottish National Party
The former first minister of Scotland said it had been the ‘worst week of my life’
Sturgeon said she was coming to terms with the realisation that she was married to someone she ‘didn’t know at all’
The former SNP leader also addressed questions about how she didn’t know about her husband’s outlandish spending
Former SNP chief executive Peter Murrell pled guilty to using party money to fund a lavish lifestyle that he couldn’t afford
Sturgeon responds to reports she had given ‘no comment’ interviews to police

It was a controlled environment, hosted by a friend, the author Andrew O’Hagan, in front of a large, mainly sympathetic audience.

They had paid 20 Euros a head to hear her speak, and gave her a round of applause at the end of her four-and-a-half-minute opening answer to the question: “How are you doing?”

Politics

Nicola Sturgeon: ‘This has been worst week of my life’

The former first minister of Scotland said the revelations of her husband’s crimes showed she ‘didn’t know him at all’

Little wonder then that she likened her appearance on stage to therapy.

Her comment was double-edged: an attempt to lighten the moment, but also a deliberate pointer towards the impact that this has had on her.

She told the audience that right now she is not ok, but that she will recover in time.

The former SNP leader knew there were journalists like me in the crowd, and that her every word would be reported and picked over. Regardless of what she said, it was always going to make headlines.

Peter Murrell leaves the High Court in Edinburgh in a prison van after he pled guilty to embezzlement. Alan Simpson

She talked of the betrayal by a husband she thought she knew, and the difficulty of processing this in the public eye while being accused of complicity. She said she was not the first woman to be betrayed by her husband, and wouldn’t be the last.

She also acknowledged that some would continue to question how she possibly could not have known what was happening right under her nose. But she maintained she was finding out some of the details along with the rest of us following Monday’s court appearance.

Throughout her political career, Sturgeon has been a divisive figure, and her account of the embezzlement of funds will be no different.

She made no reference to claims she shut down queries from party members about the SNP’s finances and made life difficult for those who questioned her authority.

We were under strict instructions not to film or record the event.

I lost count of how many times an organiser approached the small group of journalists who had made the journey to County Kerry to tell us we could not film.

Once she had finished signing books, they ushered her out to avoid any further scrutiny, and our requests to speak to her were rejected.

We will no doubt hear more from Sturgeon on this in the coming days and weeks.

She is appearing at a book festival in Wales on Friday. For now, she is attempting to speak on her own terms.

But the difficult questions will continue to follow her, and fuel calls for a more formal inquiry.