Shami Chakrabarti with Kate Mosse (2015 Event) A day after Shami Chakrabarti joined the campaigning organisation Liberty, New York’s Twin Towers were attacked. Ever since, she has fought a passionate campaign for human rights… Billy Collins One of the most popular poets on the planet and former US Poet Laureate in his first visit to the Book Festival in 2006. Billy Collins speaks without pretension and with perfect perception about the revelatory detail of our daily lives… Miranda Sawyer (2016 Event) Mid-life crises arrive at different times for different people. For journalist and broadcaster Miranda Sawyer, hers made its presence felt at the age of 44. Out of Time is Sawyer’s investigation of this most challenging of life moments, and in this even… Jonathan Safran Foer (2016 Event) The bestselling US author of Everything is Illuminated launches. Jonathan Safran Foer’s Here I Am is the story of a fracturing New York family, set against the backdrop of a much wider catastrophe as an earthquake engulfs the Middle East, sparking a… Lynn Barber (2014 event) Fearsomely incisive interviewer and journalist Lynn Barber faced a Twitter storm after an article on tennis superstar Rafael Nadal, but anonymous cyberhate is nothing for someone who has taken on the likes of Gore Vidal, James Stewart and Salvador Dali. I… Denise Mina reading We Are All Waiting The popular Scottish crime-writer reading her story on the theme of Elsewhere… John Hartson (2011 Event) The explosively talented Welsh footballer John Hartson enjoyed success with Arsenal and West Ham before becoming a striker for Celtic, where he scored more than 100 goals in a glorious five year period… Blake Morrison (2018 Event) The Sunday Times called him ‘One of our most sensitive and stylish writers’ and with his latest book, The Executor, it’s easy to see why. The bestselling novelist and poet Blake Morrison has created a biting portrait of male friendship, … A S Byatt (2010 event) In a surprise Book Festival event announced after the 2010 programme went to print, A S Byatt charmed her substantial audience to the full. Chaired by writer and literary critic Stuart Kelly, this was an engaging and appealing event of intriguing question… Jenny Erpenbeck with Michel Faber (2015 Event) If you only read one novel this year, make it The End of Days. A book that takes a series of surprising turns, it confirms German author Jenny Erpenbeck as ‘one of the finest, most exciting authors alive’. That reviewer was fellow novelist Mic…