Edinburgh International Book Festival closes this afternoon after entertaining over 3,400 primary school children from across Scotland who came to enjoy talks, workshops and discussions on the final day of the Festival…
As the former Director General of the BBC and the current Chief Executive of The New York Times Company, Mark Thompson knows more than most about the language deployed by politicians and other public figures…
“When you start a business, you need a story,” Fraser Doherty told the Book Festival…
“It was the biggest rebellion against the establishment view that we have seen in Britain in a century.” So former Prime Minister Gordon Brown has characterised the vote for Brexit,…
It was his mother who turned Tahar Ben Jalloun into a writer, he says – but not by reading to him or teaching him to write, for she could do neither herself…
With the issue of radicalisation among young Muslims perpetually surfacing in the news, and proposed solutions causing controversy on the basis of divisiveness and implicit Islamophobia, Sara Khan operates in treacherous territory…
“When you are authentic,” said Alan Cumming at the fastest selling event at this year's Book Festival, “people respect you even if they don’t agree with what you're saying…
The Victorian age may continue to be the favoured playground of contemporary historical novelists but it is still so often misrepresented, whether idealised or dumbed down…
When Aarathi Prasad decided to look into the state of medicine and healthcare in her mother’s homeland, India, she took on a subject of daunting cultural, social and economic complexity – and biting relevance…
“Extraordinary things happen when we do something as simple as track people through their lives.” So said Helen Pearson as she presented her book The Life Project: the Extraordinary Story of our Ordinary Lives…
As a young boy growing up in Musselburgh, “the idea that I would work in, live in or produce a book on Glasgow would have been astonishing,” journalist Alan Taylor told the Book Festival…
David Bowie could have laid credible claim to being a living artwork - and his recent biographer Paul Morley also has some experience of that state…
Things disappear under authoritarian governments – people; texts; buildings; memories. Peter Krištúfek and Madeleine Thien have written novels that explore the changing and changeable stories their respective countries of familial origin – Slovakia and China – tell about themselves…
So recently triumphant, yet so abruptly dethroned, our most recent ex-Prime Minister leaves something of an enigmatic legacy. Over-privileged stuffed shirt, or gifted political brain? Socially liberal would-be reformer, or inhumane advocate of austerity at all costs? Success story – or wrecking ball?…
Sir Vince Cable presented to his Book Festival audience an evocative image of Britain after the Brexit vote: that of the cartoon character who’s run off the edge of a cliff but remains suspended, furiously running in mid-air…
For a start, it’s JONG not YONG. The grande dame of sexually liberated literature commenced her Book Festival appearance by clearing up the pronunciation of her surname…
Few experiences are as romanticised as pregnancy and early motherhood – or as shrouded in mystery…
Emotional extremes characterised a chat between famed musician Wilko Johnson and DJ Vic Galloway…
Mark Greenaway has little patience with the caricaturing of the Scottish diet as a queasy cavalcade of macaroni pies and deep-fried confectionery…
“I sense I might not be the most popular person in that village,” says Graeme Macrae Burnet of Culduie,…
Before 1945, states were absolutely sovereign. In other words, explained Philippe Sands QC in his fascinating and densely packed Book Festival event on international law,…
“My intentions,” began James Kelman in typically precise and forthright style, “are to read”…
Brix Smith Start began with her father. “A Beverly Hills child psychiatrist,” she said, rolling eyes that by the end of this wildly entertaining Book Festival event would be shining with tears…
In recent years the level of interest in trans issues has exploded, something Juliet Jacques confessed she had not anticipated in her fascinating Book Festival event…
“I gave Donald Trump the idea for running for President,” Lionel Shriver told her packed Book Festival audience with a wry smile…
A feisty chat between Ian Rankin and Stewart Lee at the Book Festival saw the blockbuster crime novelist and revered comic trade insults, anecdotes and peculiar allegations about George Osborne and stationery items…
Gulwali Passarlay and Wolfgang Bauer both have first-hand experience of the chaotic and perilous routes taken by refugees from the Middle East to Europe…
We might tend to think of poets as rather pallid, introspective, indoor types, given to sleeping late and evading the light – but not so Alice Oswald…
Can you fit the state of the States, the future of China, the tumult in the Middle East, Scotland’s status and the backdrop to Brexit into one hour – and one tent?…
“She thinks she’s Jeremy Paxman,” Jackie Kay told the audience at the Book Festival, as she was pushed for answers by her interviewer, who just happened to be Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon…
The winner of the biennial Edwin Morgan Poetry Award for Scottish poets aged 30 or under is announced at the Book Festival…
In front of an intimate audience at the Book Festival, 2016’s Man Booker International Prize winner Han Kang and her British translator Deborah Smith discussed the mammoth success of the winning novel, The Vegetarian…
Can Xue’s writings were first translated in the UK in 1989. Yet it has taken until now for this titan of avant-garde Chinese writing to make an appearance in Britain…
A L Kennedy began her packed event today like a consummate stand-up: sharp, suited, self-deprecating, and hilarious…
Few of us will ever know as much about prison life as writer Erwin James, who has spoken about his experiences to a packed Book Festival audience…
She is one of the most revered and prolific writers to emerge from her native Ireland, but Edna O’Brien pursued a literary life against the wishes of her family…
“Who have I insulted? Who might sue?” Frederick Forsyth wondered as he scanned the manuscript of his new book The Outsider: My Life in Intrigue…
One might think that discovering an oil field would be a fairly dramatic business, but geologist Mike Shepherd insists it wasn’t that big a deal…
Academic and writer Tiffany Jenkins asks if repatriating the Elgin Marbles would do more harm than good…
A biography that explores a pivotal year in William Shakespeare’s life and a novel that charts an experiment in utopia in modern day Detroit have tonight won Britain’s oldest literary awards. Authors James Shapiro and Benjamin Markovits have joined the distinguished list of writers who have won the James Tait Black Prizes, which are awarded annually by The University of Edinburgh…
Alaa Al Aswany is known in his native Egypt for his forceful, clear-eyed take on politics and human rights…
Star of BBC's Springwatch Chris Packham enthralled audiences yesterday with an incredibly frank and fascinating discussion on the natural world and his own life…
No two ways about it: writing about sex has its challenges. The prudish, the prurient and the judges of the Bad Sex in Fiction Award lie in wait for those brave writers who attempt it…
The fortunes and follies of Westminster's two dominant political parties following Britain's vote to leave the EU in June were outlined in a warm and witty event with Sir Malcolm Rifkind…
Theatre of War brought a unique hybrid form to the stage of the Book Festival: a performance of classical Greek tragedy…
If you’re already celebrated as a poet, a spoken word performer, a playwright and a hip hop musician, do you really need more strings to your bow?…
Lord Mervyn King offered a withering critique of economists, bankers and politicians at the Book Festival yesterday…
A winner of the Nobel Peace Prize launched a blistering attack on the government of her native Iran, in an incendiary session at the Edinburgh International Book Festival last night…
Fear, friendship, the forthrightness of childhood and the frenzied politics of summer 2016 all came up for discussion as two of Scotland’s most celebrated writers took the stage for the first blockbuster event of the 2016 Edinburgh International Book Festival…
We're bursting out of Charlotte Square Gardens this year for three special two-day Festivals around Scotland…
Award-winning disabled access review charity Euan’s Guide has announced that voting is now open for its Accessible Edinburgh Festival Award…
Book Festival reveals first author events for 2024 
