Festival BooksWeekPlanner
The Edinburgh International Book Festival can, at first glance, seem rather intimidating. Thankfully, we’re here to lend a hand, picking out a week’s worth of activities that should see you right. All events take place in Charlotte Square Gardens. See edinburghfestival.list.co.uk/events/ books and www.edbookfest.co.uk for more details
Saturday 14
Carol-Ann Duffy Britain’s Poet Laureate will be present at three events over the course of the festival; in this first, she entertains children with stories and poetry, with musical accompaniment from Edinburgh-based actor and musician John Sampson. 11.30am, £4.
Fergal Keane To date, the BBC war reporter follows up his personal memoir All The People with historical military chronicle Road of Bones: The Siege of Kohima 1994. It depicts a battle between British and Indian troops and the Imperial Japanese Army, told with Keane’s own insight into humanity.
Noon, £10 (£8).
Sarah Irving & Sharyn Lock Teaming up with Sharyn Lock to write Gaza: Beneath the Bombs, Sarah Irving recounts how, after landing in Gaza in 2009 as an aid worker, she survived through 22 days of attack from Israeli armed forces.
12.30pm, £10 (£8). Darren Shan Shan is one of the leading figures in young horror and fantasy writing. Having conquered the vampire subgenre with his 12-book Saga of Darren Shan and alternate universes populated with evil spirits in his ten-book series The Demonata, he turns his attention to a tale of tyrants and gods in his latest release, The Thin Executioner.
1.30pm, £4.
Maggie O’Farrell ‘Motherhood is often depicted as this caring, nurturing thing . . . but it also has this amazingly tigerish, fierce side.’ So says Maggie O’Farrell, whose latest novel, The Hand That First Held Mine, features two women who are separated by space and time, but bound together by these sometimes overpowering animal instincts. 3pm, £10 (£8). Howard Jacobson The Book Festival has a reputation for signing up writers who go on to form a substantial portion of the Booker longlist. Broadcaster, journalist and author Jacobson has just been longlisted for the fourth time, and is in town to discuss the novel in question: The Finkler Question.
7pm, £10 (£8). Sunday 15
Tohby Riddle The resident illustrator for both the Sydney Morning Herald and the Book Festival itself discusses the creative process behind his work, and explains how fledgling cartoonists and other artists can embark upon the path to publication. 6pm, £10 (£8). Gavin Francis & John Geiger Two writers who have documented extreme
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Christopher Brookmyre
living in the far north discuss their experiences. Fife-born GP Gavin Francis explored the Faroe islands, Iceland and Lapland for his book True North: Travels in Arctic Europe, while New Yorker John Geiger has collected tales of survival in extreme conditions for The Third Man Factor. Financial Times’ China bureau has been in a unique position to watch the changes and development in Chinese government over the last two decades. He appears at the festival to discuss his new book, The Party, which documents his dealings with those who walk the Communist Party’s corridors of power.
8.30pm, £10 (£8). 2pm, £10 (£8).
Ruth Padel The great-great- granddaughter of Charles Darwin (and a celebrated poet in her own right), Padel attends the festival to discuss the challenge of shifting from poetry to prose and the subject of environmental contrasts in her novel, Where The Serpent Sleeps, which is set between the urban jungle of London and the rainforests of India. Noon, £10 (£8). Jake Arnott and Philip Baruth Two masters of historical fiction meet to discuss the different approaches an author may take in the genre. Jake Arnott is the author of The Devil’s Paintbrush, in which hero of the British Empire Sir Hector Macdonald has an encounter with legendary occultist Aleister Crowley. Philip Baruth’s The Boswell Brothers concerns author James Boswell and the famous Dr. Samuel Johnson, who are stalked by Boswell’s younger sibling.
2.30pm, £10 (£8). Michael Faber The award-winning Dutch-born fiction writer, author of the Dickensian novel The Crimson Petal and The White, delivers a reading and discussion of his short story ‘A Flash of Blue Light’, which was commissioned especially by the Book Festival as part of their ‘Elsewhere’ series. The story, told in utter deadpan, begins with a woman entering a Yorkshire police station to report her own alien abduction . . . 6pm, £7 (£5).
Monday 16
John Glenday The Scottish poet has waited a long time since publishing his last collection, 1996’s Undark. He has spent 14 years’ writing and refining, and now seems ready to reveal his new publication, Grain, to the world.
10.15am, £10 (£8). Richard McGregor The chief of the
Jeanette Winterson Winterson’s debut novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, was hailed as a great step forward in feminist and lesbian literature – themes that Winterson herself insists should not be restricted to those groups, but explored by all. The book was published in 1985; now, 25 years later, Winterson revisits the book and examines its impact on the literary landscape. 11.30am, £10 (£8). Fay Weldon Following up the immensely successful Chalcot Crescent, Weldon visits the Book Festival with her new novel Kehua! The story follows a young woman who flees to London to escape a past filled with dark, criminal secrets – but is followed from New Zealand by restless Maori ghosts, the kehua of the title.
1.30pm, £10 (£8). Simon Callow The much-beloved star of stage and screen is also a noted author, having created biographies of Oscar Wilde, Orson Welles and Charles Laughton. In this event he will discuss his own ‘alternative’ autobiography, in which he charts his life through the roles and people that have influenced his career. He’ll probably also find time to mention his Fringe Show, Shakespeare: The Man from Stratford.
4.30pm, £10 (£8). Tuesday 17
John Banville Four-years after 2005 Booker Prize-winning novel The Sea, the Irish master stylist published his 19th book. The Infinites’ is a tale of a darkly dysfunctional family, whose problems are exacerbated when Greek deities get involved. 11.30am, £10 (£8). Jeremy Hardy My Family and Other Strangers is the comedian and broadcaster’s most recent foray into publishing, a memoir inspired by his
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grandmother’s wild claims of family greatness. 1.30pm, £10 (£8). David Shrigley The Glasgow-based artist is a modern fellow fully worthy of the title Renaissance Man: one who can choose to turn his hand to any task (in this case, being a cartoonist, artist, director and musical collaborator), and complete it with ease. In this event, Shrigley discusses his career and ideas ahead of the autumn release of a ‘greatest hits’ publication.
8.30pm, £10 (£8). Wednesday 18
Patrick Hennessey A soldier who has fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, Hennessey comes to Edinburgh to discuss his memoir, The Young Officer’s Reading Club, which offers a critical account of his training at Sandhurst, as well as his promotion to the rank of Captain – the youngest ever in the Army. 10.30am, £10 (£8). Ilan Pappé The author John Pilger described as ‘Israel’s bravest and most incisive historian’ visits Edinburgh with his new book, The Rise and Fall of a Palestinian Dynasty, which charts the lives of the Husayni family throughout two centuries of Palestine’s history. The author comes with controversy already attached – he was forced out of his post at the University of Haifa as a result of his outspoken attitudes.
2pm, £10 (£8).
Alasdair Gray Gray’s comedic drama Fleck is a striking adaptation of Goethe’s Faust – in this version, the Devil is cast as the hero, a decision that seems more sensible in the 21st century. With the help of three professional actors, Gray will stage the prologue and first act from Fleck at this unique event. 3pm, £10 (£8). Michael Rosen The broadcaster, novelist and former Children’s Laureate performs a special poetry reading, which promises to be enjoyable for kids, parents and grandparents alike.
5pm, £4. Thursday 19
Helen Dunmore The Booker- longlisted author of Leningrad-set The Siege follows her characters onwards into Soviet-era paranoia, and life under the brutal Stalin regime. 2.30pm, £10 (£8).
Pippi Longstocking An interactive kids’ workshop about everyone’s favourite red-headed adventuress, with story-telling, stocking-making and a chance to meet Pippi herself!
4.30pm, £4.
Robert Winston Imperial college’s most famous moustachioed professor discusses the topic of his book Bad Ideas?: great inventions whose purpose has been misapplied, from nuclear weapons spawned by relativity, to killer antibiotics. 4.30pm, £10 (£8). Ian Rankin The Rebus writer is celebrating his 50th birthday with two stints at the Book Festival; this first one is a discussion on police procedural thriller The Complaints, and why his stories are so perfectly-suited to an Edinburgh setting. 6.30pm, £10 (£8).