ALEX Salmond reopened the debate over the BBC’s role in the independence referendum today when he said he was caught by surprise by what he claims was its biased coverage during the campaign last year…
The Edinburgh International Book Festival closes tomorrow (Tuesday 1 September) having enjoyed the most successful year in its history…
CYBER attacks on governments by terrorist groups like Islamic State are just a matter of time, espionage expert Gordon Corera has said…
GORDON Brown has accused the Conservative Party of “turning on the tap of English nationalism” that risked the future of the Union…
HOLLYWOOD star Alan Cumming has spoken of his pride of having his portrait take the place of a painting of The Queen in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery…
THE leader of the Green Party, Caroline Lucas has described Westminster as an “embarrassment” which does “a very good job as a museum but a far less good a job as representative democracy.”…
THE legalisation of drugs in Scotland would cut rates of narcotics-related violence at a stroke, journalist Johann Hari has claimed…
THE West will have to enter into dialogue with Islamic State terrorists if it wants to stop the violence, former hostage Terry Waite has said…
AUTHOR Andrew O’Hagan has accused European powers of being “in convention of the most fundamental human decency” by not doing everything possible to save migrants fleeing war and poverty in their home countries…
When I first saw the name of the tent we are in today, at Edinburgh International Book Festival, I didn’t know what to make of it, and it got me thinking…
A LIFE in satire and the potential risks of his trade dominated Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell’s address at the Edinburgh International Book Festival…
Giving voices to the dispossessed caught in two very separate brutal worlds of organised crime dominated the discussion between authors, Ryan Gattis and Marlon James at the Edinburgh International Book Festival…
The lasting impact of Truman Capote’s classic novel In Cold Blood, and the abiding resentment felt towards him by the community he wrote about, was revealed by travel writer David Reynolds at the Edinburgh International Book Festival…
Chen Guangcheng, has warned that China poses a “threat to humanity”…
TARTAN Noir writer Doug Johnstone has said that he will never write a detective crime series because he felt he could not bring himself to “torture” the same character repeatedly…
CREATING myths, building landscapes, and the hazard of marathon writing sessions dominated the discussion between debut authors Chigozie Obioma and Simon Sylvester…
THE determination by young people to find a new political expression and refusal to engage with traditional politics is hurting their own generation’s prospects, Georgia Gould, author of Wasted, has said…
The challenges of the difficult second novel, grasping grown-up children and the frustration of men taking women’s roles, were topics up for discussion with actress Celia Imrie…
SCOTS pop icon Edwyn Collins has revealed that he is going to release another album. The star made the announcement at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, where he appeared on stage with his wife, Grace Maxwell, and author Ian Rankin…
CONTEMPORARY artists are limiting their creativity by forcing themselves to adopt a philosophy at the start of their careers, author Julian Barnes has said…
DEVOTING quarter of a century chronicling the career of the world’s biggest band and turning down repeated film deals from Hollywood were among the topics touched on by leading Beatles expert, Mark Lewisohn, at the Edinburgh International Book Festival this evening…
The National Library of Scotland has been selected to host the third Dr Gavin Wallace Fellowship, it was announced at the Edinburgh International Book Festival this evening…
LIVING and coping with the challenges of dementia was the focus of discussion for a leading academic on the condition, June Andrews…
ALEX Salmond’s attack on Nick Robinson and the BBC over its coverage during the Independence Referendum was “bizarre” and “weird”, broadcaster James Naughtie has said…
STORIES of superhuman endurance, massive egos and personal sacrifice dominated a discussion of the rise of the Jamaican athletics team and the Kenyan long distance runners…
YOUNG children not be limited in the accents and dialects they use and hear, one of the UK’s leading linguists has said…
THE delights and frustrations of writing a different 365-word story for a whole year were set out by author James Robertson at the Edinburgh International Book Festival…
CIVIL rights campaigner Jesse Jackson told an audience at the Edinburgh International Book Festival that the advance of science and technology means that nations are “no longer foreigners” but that they now had “the bigger challenge to live together.”…
THE British muslim teenage girls who travelled to Syria to join Islamic terrorists were looking for a “pure Islamic lifestyle”, not to commit acts of violence, author and journalist Jason Burke told an audience at the Edinburgh International Book Festival…
F Scott Fitzgerald’s Hollywood swansong and the burdens of writing a historical novel were among the subjects discussed by US authors Liza Klaussmann and Stewart O’Nan at the Edinburgh International Book Festival…
AN analysis of the microbes in a person’s faeces will give a better idea of the health problems they risk than a profile of their DNA, a leading epidemiologist has said…
TONY Blair has been branded as the “worst” of the neo-conservative politicians for his “blind support” of Israel against Palestine by a leading academic on the Middle-East situation…
THE protests outside BBC Scotland’s Glasgow headquarters in the run up to last year’s independence referendum were like something from “Putin’s Russia”, former BBC political editor Nick Robinson has said…
THE story of how beautiful libraries and schools have been built in the poorest communities of Colombia to help social transformation, was brought to the Edinburgh International Book Festival by the revolutionary politician, Sergio Fajardo…
Cold War spies who handed the secrets of the US atom bombs to the Soviets may come to be looked on as “the saviours of the world”, an audience was told at the Edinburgh International Book Festival…
THE challenge of protecting individual privacy and human rights, in a time of increasing state surveillance through the internet, dominated Security vs Human Rights debate at the Edinburgh International Book Festival last night…
The whole international system of human rights could fall "like a pack of cards" if the UK pulls out of it, leading campaigner Shami Chakrabarti has warned…
THE journalist who exposed the extent of predatory paedophile Jimmy Savile's activities has said he believes the government is using a drawn-out public inquiry into allegations of Westminster child abuse as way to “ride out the storm” and "killing" the scandal…
What it means to be an immigrant writer, bereavement and the pointlessness of cultural boycotts dominated discussions with the internationally acclaimed novelists, Israeli writer Etgar Keret and The Congo’s Alain Mabanckou, at the Edinburgh International Book Festival last night…
Author A.L. Kennedy has said that she believes there should never be a female Doctor Who. The writer, who has just published a Doctor Who novel, The Drosten’s Curse, said that it would be at odds with the nature of the character of the Doctor to do this…
Governments and the public have been complicit in marginalising the mentally ill allowing treatment services to be cut, a leading expert on the sociology of madness has said…
Edinburgh International Book Festival enjoyed one of its busiest opening weekends and a record trade in its adult and children’s bookshops…
In the first of three events, the Edinburgh International Book Festival offered an insight into the little-known world of Mexican literature when it invited two of its best exponents to discuss their work…
Land reform in Scotland could take more than a generation to achieve, one of its strongest advocates told an audience at the Edinburgh International Book Festival…
COMEDIAN Paul Merton told an audience at the Edinburgh International Book Festival today, that he had found it hard to believe that television presenter Jimmy Savile had been a serial paedophile…
Debut novelist Zia Haider Rahman and author, journalist and critic Richard Benson have joined the distinguished list of writers who have won the James Tait Black Prizes…
Fears about the future of the planet, a fascination with uncertainty and what constitutes a classic novel dominated the discussion with writer John Burnside at the Edinburgh International Book Festival…
SCOTS author Ali Smith warned that the axing of public libraries by local authorities threatened the "democracy of reading" and would have an impact on the next generation of writers. …
THE importance of reading and writing in maintaining mental health and its role in helping him conquer depression, was discussed by Matt Haig in front of a packed audience at the Edinburgh International Book Festival as part of the Festival’s Staying Well strand of events…
It’s one of those issues on which it might seem pretty easy to have the right dinner-party opinion: the Elgin (or Parthenon) Marbles were unjustly looted;…
INVENTING universes, film adaptations and turning Twitter tweets into a novel were among the subjects dealt with by author David Mitchell at the Edinburgh International Book Festival this evening. Addressing a packed audience, the writer revealed that his forthcoming novels would all inhabit the same Newtonian-law bending universe that exists in Bone Clocks…
THE future of mathematics is being damaged by a lack of willingness among young people to struggle to succeed, one of the world’s greatest living mathematicians has said. Speaking at Edinburgh International Book Festival, the French mathematician Cedric Villani said that a developing general culture of permissiveness meant children were not being challenged to push themselves…
THE creative worlds of two of literature’s greatest children’s writers, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland creator Lewis Carroll and Peter Pan author JM Barrie, and their impact on modern culture, were examined at the Edinburgh International Book Festival this morning…
Theatre of War brought a unique hybrid form to the stage of the Edinburgh International Book Festival: a performance of classical Greek tragedy…
Theatre of War brought a unique hybrid form to the stage of the Edinburgh International Book Festival: a performance of classical Greek tragedy…
Organisers of the Edinburgh International Book Festival today announced that, in a collaboration with BBC Arts, ten events from the 2015 Book Festival will be live-streamed and available on demand by BBC Arts Online in August reaching audiences far beyond Charlotte Square Gardens. …
The Edinburgh International Book Festival opens its doors on Saturday morning to 17 days of ideas, debate, discussion and books, lots of books.
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Palestinian writer and lawyer, Raja Shehadeh launches Shifting Sands at the Edinburgh International Book Festival later this month…
Jenny Niven in The List ‘Hot 100’ 
