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Hundreds of events for adults, teenagers and children feature authors, illustrators, musicians, poets, policians, thinkers, prize-winners and rising stars every August.
The world history you thought you knew is wrong. Howard W French’s Born in Blackness presents a new perspective on modern civilisation – from the point of view of Africa and its people. The impetus for the ‘Age of Discovery’ was not Europe’s...
Did you know that flies can help us solve crimes? Spiders can be astronauts? Moths are the ultimate fashion designers? Discover the extraordinary things that bugs do for us with Dr Erica McAlister, the Natural History Museum’s senior entomologist....
Two years ago, inspired by Book Festival discussions about the necessity of imagination for political change, Val McDermid and Geographer Royal for Scotland Jo Sharp invited a diverse group of people to share their ideas. This summer a post-pandemic...
Come and hear from two of the greatest writers for young adults as they talk about their new novels, both love stories in their own way and both based in Scotland. In Stay Another Day, Juno Dawson weaves three siblings’ experiences over one Christmas...
Join author and poet Michael Rosen as he takes you on a trip around some of his best-loved books of all time. Michael’s poetry covers the full spectrum of human life and in this event expect to be treated to poems on migration, Michael’s recovery...
Meet two authors of novels about life in an extraordinary city. In Lucy Caldwell’s These Days, it’s 1941 and Belfast has escaped the worst of the war, until the Blitz brings devastation. Now, two sisters must find a way to carry on. Louise...
What does recovery mean, when a person has been through something they never could have prepared for? When the Dust Settles is crisis management expert Lucy Easthope’s memoir of existing in the aftermath of disaster. In Recovery, GP and author Gavin...
Ocean Vuong’s reckoning with the death of his mother – and the grief, trauma and love that attends such a loss – lies at the heart of his new poetry collection, Time is a Mother. Vuong’s work is infused with stories of migration, identity and...
Hernan Diaz’s Trust is made up of novels nested within novels like the gilded surprises hidden in Fabergé eggs. A legendary financier in 1920s New York is the subject of an inflammatory book that sheds light on his private life. But as other voices...
In 2020, Francis Galton’s name was removed from University College London buildings. The ‘father of eugenics’ had authored theories of selective procreation used to justify racism and genocide. Discussing his book Control: The Dark History and...
Announcing our Communities Programme and Citizen events this August 
