John Burnside

Christopher Brookmyre Acclaimed Scottish novelist and hugely entertaining speaker, Christopher Brookmyre talks in this 2008 event about his latest book, A Snowball in Hell, which takes celebrity culture and turns it on its head… 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… Tom Parker Bowles The popular food critic and writer Tom Parker Bowles traveled the country meeting the weird and wonderful people and dishes which make up our culinary heritage and in this event he talks about his discoveries with his customary blend humour and wisdom… Joanna David - with Josephine Hart & Dan Stevens The poetry and life of Byron is examined by novelist and poetry evangelist Josephine Hart in this 2007 event. With readings by renowned actors of stage and screen, Joanna David and Dan Stevens… Stephen Baxter with Ken MacLeod (2017 Event) In the 1990s, Stephen Baxter won almost every award going for The Time Ships – the sequel to H G Wells’s The Time Machine. In this event, recorded live at the 2017 Edinburgh International Book Festival, he brings us his new book, The Massacre of Mankind… Candice Carty-Williams & Annaleese Jochems at the Edinburgh International Book Festival Meet two authors chronicling the off-kilter experiences of upbeat millennials. Candice Carty-Williams’s novel Queenie sees a Jamaican British woman search for identity. Jojo Moyes called it ‘brilliant, timely, funny, heartbreaking’… Anne Applebaum: Democracy Under Siege (2020 Event) ‘Given the right conditions, any society can turn against democracy. Indeed, if history is anything to go by, all of our societies eventually will.’ Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Anne Applebaum’s bleak prognosis for liberal democracy lies at the heart of… Neil Griffiths & Richard Powers (2018 Event) Considered by many to be one of America’s great literary voices, National Book Award winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist Richard Powers presents The Overstory, his seductive and beguiling novel of interlocking stories (now also shortlisted for the 201… Nile Rodgers (2012 event) He may be best known for the disco hit Le Freak but Nile Rodgers’ influence on pop music has been so very much greater than that… Museums and Libraries (2015 Event) Museums and galleries dominate as destinations, attracting record numbers of visitors to blockbuster shows. Meanwhile libraries are facing a funding crisis and are increasingly asked to justify their existence. What can libraries learn from museums, and…