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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.
Imagine trying to escape from Auschwitz as a teenager, hiding for three days, while 3,000 SS and their bloodhounds search for you. This is the story of Rudolf Vrba, whose report on the atrocity of Auschwitz reached Roosevelt, Churchill and the Pope,...
Funny, sophisticated, profound – the novels of Howard Jacobson offer innumerable delights. But the Booker Prize-winning author didn’t publish until he was 40 years old. Now 16 books into a stellar career, Jacobson returns to his roots in Mother’s...
Join two bestselling novelists as they discuss displacement, cruelty and the strength of unlikely attachments. In Hannah Kent’s Devotion, teenage Hanne finds a kindred spirit in Thea – but Thea’s Old Lutheran family are leaving in search of...
Black girls and women take some time off from being on their Sunday best behaviour in The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw. In these refreshing short stories, female lives are seasoned with desire, despite the restrictions imposed by...
Book Festival regulars need no introduction to Richard Holloway: he has spoken at the Festival every August for the past 23 years. He joins us this time to discuss The Heart of Things – a collection of his favourite poems and quotations, knitted...
In a town on the Scottish borders, a child waits fearfully for the second coming. As she grows, she begins to question the way her religion infiltrates every corner of her life. Ali Millar introduces her debut memoir The Last Days about growing up as a...
This is one Uyghur woman’s astonishing story of survival. More than a million Uyghur Muslims are incarcerated in Chinese detention units: China describes them as re-education camps while human rights organisations accuse China of genocide. Gulbahar...
Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Kathryn Schulz met the woman who would become her wife just 18 months before her beloved father died. In Lost & Found she explores the intertwining of love and grief, of loss and discovery, via the three families at the...
Canon Daniel Clement enjoys a quiet life with his mother Audrey and his two dachshunds in the peaceful village of Champton. But when he decides to add a lavatory to the church, the parish is thrown into discord – leading to murder. Reverend Richard...