Tuesday 19 August 15:30 - 16:30
- Attend in person
- Captioned
The benefits of culture to health, education and community are championed, but can culture ever do wrong? First published in 2020, academics and creative industry experts Orian Brook, Dave O'Brien and Mark Taylor's Culture is Bad for You breaks down the…
Tuesday 19 August 16:00 - 17:00
- Attend in person
- BSL interpreted
- Captioned
In Electric Spark, Frances Wilson digs into Muriel Spark's young life, uncovering untold experiences and strange encounters that ultimately shaped Spark as a person and writer. Meanwhile, in Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife, Francesca Wade shares unseen…
Tuesday 19 August 18:45 - 19:45
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- Captioned
'That it is a masterpiece is without question' is how the Observer described Question 7: Richard Flanagan's 12th book, winner of 2024's Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction. Today the multitalented author shares with Chris Power how he brought together…
Wednesday 20 August 12:45 - 13:45
- Attend in person
- Watch online
- Captioned
Rosemary Goring's Exile: The Captive Years of Mary, Queen of Scots and Jade Scott's Captive Queen shed remarkable new light on the duplicitous years of Mary's English imprisonment. Meanwhile, Kate Anderson's Art & Court of James VI & I reconsiders Mary's…
Wednesday 20 August 13:15 - 14:15
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- Captioned
Post-war Britain can seem increasingly distant, yet Geoff Dyer's delightful new memoir, Homework, brings it back to life with verve and wit. Recalling his working-class Cheltenham childhood of the SOs and 60s, Dyer (a Fellow of the Royal Society of…
Wednesday 20 August 13:45 - 14:45
- Attend in person
- Captioned
Join us for a fascinating event exploring the art and politics of listening. Bodies of Sound, an anthology edited by Irene Revell and Sarah Shin, brings together poets, musicians, and writers to offer new insights into how we listen and hear. Alice……
Wednesday 20 August 14:15 - 15:15
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- Captioned
With access to over 3,000 letters penned by Muriel Spark, distinguished professor Dan Gunn has spent five years decoding the enigmatic author while compiling The Letters of Muriel Spark. Meanwhile, journalist Frances Wilson's fascination with Spark led…
Wednesday 20 August 15:30 - 16:30
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- Captioned
For her unimpeachable fashion sense, her role in the abdication of her husband, and her shameful connection with Adolf Hitler - fascination with Wallis Simpson continues unabated nearly 40 years after her death. Now, award-winning historian Paul French…
Wednesday 20 August 17:45 - 18:45
- Attend in person
- Captioned
Guardian central and eastern Europe correspondent Shaun Walker joins us in conversation with Charlotte Higgins, discussing his secret history, The Illegals, where he puts a decade reporting from Moscow to good use, revealing, with the pace and intrigue…
Wednesday 20 August 18:30 - 19:30
- Attend in person
- Captioned
Ah, history… musty, stuffy, cobwebby stuff, right? Wrong – with Anthony Delaney’s Queer Georgians and Alice Loxton’s Eighteen, you’re getting history that’s as fizzing with verve and wit as its authors. Join two of the brightest young historians today…
Full 2025 Book Festival programme is announced with key theme of Repair 
