Wednesday 13 August 15:00 - 16:00
- Attend in person
- Captioned
Barbara Demick’s international reporting has won the Robert F Kennedy Journalism Award and the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, plus nominations for a National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize…
Wednesday 13 August 15:00 - 16:00
- Attend in person
- Captioned
Terrific storytellers and co-hosts of the Empire podcast series, Anita Anand and William Dalrymple are experts at getting to the heart of some of history's biggest power struggles. Today they ask what reparations mean in the context of empire?…
Wednesday 13 August 15:30 - 16:30
- Attend in person
- Captioned
Expect dark humour and keen insights into parenthood in this conversation with John Niven and Wendy Erskine…
Wednesday 13 August 15:45 - 16:45
- Attend in person
- Captioned
Join us today for a powerful conversation delving into three urgent and gripping new books: Mona Arshi's Mouth, Rosa Beltrán's Free Radicals, and Sunny Singh's Refuge: Stories of War (and Love)…
Wednesday 13 August 16:00 - 17:00
- Attend in person
- Captioned
Bolu Babalola and Beth O'Leary chat to Nyla Ahmad about the awkwardness of love…
Wednesday 13 August 16:45 - 17:45
- Attend in person
- Captioned
This captivating event juxtaposes the intimately human with the wonders of outer space…
Wednesday 13 August 17:00 - 18:00
- Attend in person
- Watch online
- Captioned
The 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 has resurged in public consciousness following Sky's recent drama Lockerbie: A Search for Truth. Dr Jim Swire's daughter Flora was killed on the ground, and The Lockerbie Bombing: A Father's Search for Justice…
Wednesday 13 August 17:30 - 18:30
- Attend in person
- Captioned
ReaderBank is an ambitious attempt to create the world's largest study of reading, imagination, and mental health.A collaboration between our Festival and researchers from Durham University, ReaderBank returns with new insights about what happens when we…
Wednesday 13 August 17:45 - 18:45
- Attend in person
- Captioned
At 81 years old, political activist, journalist, and filmmaker Tariq Ali has witnessed countless global conflicts and world-defining movements. Through a series of eyewitness accounts and reflections, Ali's memoir, You Can't Please All, recounts modern…
Wednesday 13 August 18:00 - 19:00
- Attend in person
- Captioned
Following the success of the Fringe Firstwinning show, This is Memorial Device, at our 2022 Book Festival, Gordon Burn Prize-winner David Keenan is back with new book, Volcanic Tongue…
Wednesday 13 August 18:30 - 19:30
- Attend in person
- Captioned
Author of the acclaimed Trust Exercise, Susan Choi's Flashlight is a twisting, character-driven mystery about the tensions of family life, spanning the Korean diaspora, Japan, and ultimately the US. And Youssef Rakha's hallucinatory The Dissenters…
Wednesday 13 August 18:45 - 19:45
- Attend in person
- Watch online
- Captioned
Ilan Pappé (A Very Short History of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, Lobbying for Zionism) and Avi Shlaim (Genocide in Gaza: Israel, Hamas, and the Long War on Palestine) have decades of experience in analysing Israel and Palestine, and their impact on…
Wednesday 13 August 19:15 - 20:15
- Attend in person
- Captioned
We believe that everyone has a story to tell and that stories help us make sense of our world. We've challenged local writers and poets, this year, to respond to 2025's Festival theme: Repair…
Wednesday 13 August 19:30 - 20:30
- Attend in person
- Captioned
Few know what it takes to navigate the intense mental and physical demands of professional cycling quite like Michael Hutchinson. A writer and former champion professional cyclist, his latest book, Further, is a deep dive into the world of extreme…
Wednesday 13 August 20:15 - 21:30
- Attend in person
- Captioned
Norway's Future Library is a powerful gesture of hope for a world beyond our lifetime. Every year, for 100 years, an author writes a new book to be placed inside its walls; every text remains unread until 2114…
Wednesday 13 August 20:30 - 21:30
- Attend in person
- Watch online
- Captioned
The ramblechats on Adam Buxton's smash-hit podcast are never predictable, but always charming and enlightening, and the same applies to the tales in his idiosyncratic new memoir, I Love You, Byeee…
Thursday 14 August 10:00 - 11:00
- Attend in person
- Captioned
Start your day with the facts. High quality, thorough, and trustworthy journalism has never been more important in helping us understand the world as it really is, so in our First Edition events you can join leading journalists from across the media (and…
Thursday 14 August 10:15 - 11:15
- Attend in person
- Captioned
Has anywhere sounded more ominous than the 'Home for Crying Children'? Join Karen Downs-Barton, whose playful new poetry collection Minx effortlessly blends forms in a lyrically vivid evocation of a childhood distinctly less ordinary…
Thursday 14 August 10:30 - 11:30
- Attend in person
- Captioned
The natural world, and humanity's fraught relationship with it, slips into focus in this event…
Thursday 14 August 11:30 - 12:30
- Attend in person
- Captioned
The bitter cold is harsh, testing, and unavoidable. It's no surprise it is a prominent setting for a psychological thriller. But what is it about this extreme weather condition that lends itself so well to a gripping novel?…
Full 2025 Book Festival programme is announced with key theme of Repair 
