Tony Benn

Colm Toibin (2012 event) A writer absolutely at the height of his powers, Colm Tóibín is known for his stunning novels such as Brooklyn and… Johann Hari (2015 Event) It’s a century since drugs were first banned in the United States, thus unleashing a war against narcotics that has raged ever since. Journalist Johann Hari conducted a three-year investigation into the reality of drugs and now presents Chasing the… William McIlvanney (2013 Event) Two years ago, fans flocking to see William McIlvanney at the Book Festival shared his exasperation that his seminal crime novels were out of print. Attending that event was Francis Bickmore, editorial director of Canongate, who immediately took action… Billy Collins (2014 Event) Billy Collins has twice been poet laureate in the US and says he hopes his poems ‘begin in Kansas and end in Oz’. Aimless Love, his first collection of new and selected poems for 12 years, is elegant, poignant and thrillingly accessible. In… Gregor Fisher & Melanie Reid (2016 Event) Gregor Fisher may be best known as Rab C Nesbitt, the funniest string-vested street philosopher in all of Govan, but his own life story is far from amusing. His upbringing was a tale of secrets, deception, tragedy, rejection and death, and only now has he… Kevin Barry (2016 Event) Kevin Barry’s Beatlebone won the £10,000 Goldsmiths Prize for ‘fiction at its most novel’. The phrase seems apt: even though this is a story built from familiar elements – an imagined John Lennon, post-Beatles in 1978, trying to pay a visit to an isle off… John Mortimer Utter delight in the company of one of the most effervescent minds in the land, creator of Rumpole of the Bailey and now a wonderful new comic novel, Quite Honestly. This 2006 event with John Mortimer is great fun… Elizabeth Laird reading Red Wolves in the Mist An engaging new story by a much-admired author of young adult fiction, read by the author herself… Roger Robinson: ‘Ordinary Poems Won’t Change the World (2020 Event) Firmly rooted in the dub poetry tradition of his Trinidadian heritage, Robinson’s plain-speaking, fizzy, often joyous verse journeys through our contemporary preoccupations with a seasoned insight few could replicate. From the ongoing injustices of… Steve Sem-Sandberg and Sjón (2016 Event) Meet two of Europe's most talented novelists. Swedish writer Steve Sem-Sandberg’s The Chosen Ones follows his towering novel The Emperor of Lies in describing brutality and tenderness in the Nazi era – this time in a home for sick children in Vienna…