Tuesday 31 August 10:35am

Book Festival closes with moving tribute to Edwin Morgan

Full Press Release: Book Festival closes with moving tribute to Edwin Morgan

The Edinburgh International Festival closed with a moving tribute to Scotland’s first national poet, Edwin Morgan who died last week.  Richard Holloway chaired the final event in Charlotte Square Gardens which featured readings and personal tributes from 14 of Scotland’s top poets including Douglas Dunn, Janice Galloway, Hamish Whyte, Liz Lochhead and Jackie Kay.

The 2010 Festival has featured over 750 participants from 50 countries including Nobel Laureates Joseph Stiglitz, Amartya Sen and Seamus Heaney, Poets Laureate Carol Ann Duffy and Keorapetse ‘Willie’ Kgositsile from South Africa as well as 10 of the 13 authors long-listed for the 2010 Man Booker Prize.  Highlights of the 17 day festival included the first appearance in Edinburgh of A S Byatt, the delivery of the Donald Dewar Memorial Lecture by ex-Chancellor Alistair Darling, exclusive pre-publication readings from Seamus Heaney, Will Self and Michael Frayn and launches of memoirs from Candia McWilliam, Vidal Sassoon and Nicholas Parsons.  Amongst the international authors, Alberto Manguel, Joyce Carol Oates, Garry Trudeau and D B C Pierre were welcome additions to the programme.

Peter Mandelson spoke at his first public event to promote his memoir, The Third Man to a capacity audience, and closed his event with his proposed Oxford Dictionary definition of the new word ‘mandelsonian’ as “subtle, strategic, hard working and ultimately very loyal.”