Saturday 17 August 17:30 - 18:30
- Attend in person
- Watch online
- BSL interpreted
- Captioned
In August 2022, literary luminary Salman Rushdie was stabbed on stage as he delivered a talk on artistic freedom and writers in exile. In a very rare interview, as part of our McEwan series of events, we are honoured to present Knife: Meditations After…
Saturday 17 August 17:30 - 18:30
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- Watch online
- Captioned
Elif Shafak once noted that, after reading Richard Holloway – broadcaster, writer, professor, and former head of the Scottish Episcopal Church – ‘you understand the world better, you feel less lonely’. Come and hear Holloway talk with Allan Little about…
Saturday 17 August 17:45 - 18:45
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- Captioned
‘A Russian doll of a book’ is how the Financial Times described Catherine Lacey’s Biography of X, a novel disguised in biographical form, riven with complexity and intrigue. When ‘X’, an iconoclastic artist dies suddenly, her grief-stricken widow begins…
Saturday 17 August 18:15 - 19:15
Sunday 18 August 15:15 - 16:15
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- Watch online
- Captioned
What happens when love surprises you later in life? How long can it last? Howard Jacobson, Booker-prize-winning author of The Finkler Question and author of more than twenty books besides, explores this, and more, in What Will Survive of Us: a tender new…
Sunday 18 August 18:15 - 19:15
Sunday 18 August 19:00 - 20:00
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- Watch online
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Paul Lynch describes his 2023 Booker Prize-winning Prophet Song as an ‘attempt at radical empathy’. Nicola Sturgeon discusses the power of fiction to illuminate the possible with this writer at the top of his game…
Monday 19 August 17:00 - 18:00
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- Watch online
- Captioned
We welcome national treasure Alexander McCall Smith to the Festival to unveil his brand-new series, The Perfect Passion Company. McCall Smith is joined in conversation by chair, James Crawford…
Monday 19 August 18:45 - 19:45
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- Watch online
- BSL interpreted
- Captioned
Food gives us life, yet diet misinformation abounds. Bestselling author and epidemiologist Tim Spector is here to separate fact from fiction – and to reassure us that we can love our bodies and food equally. Drawing on new research, Food for Life is an…
Tuesday 20 August 11:00 - 12:00
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- BSL interpreted
- Captioned
How can a deaf woman speak out in a hearing world? Sarah Marsh explores in a fascinating conversation this morning. Her debut novel, A Sign of Her Own, is an evocative story of connection, concealment, and betrayal about a deaf student of Alexander…
Tuesday 20 August 12:45 - 13:45
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Can we choose who we become, or are our lives already mapped out for us by dint of who we’re related to? Limberlost (by twice Miles Franklin Award-listed author, Robbie Arnott) and The Son of Man (by Animalia author, Jean-Baptiste Del Amo) are brilliant…
Tuesday 20 August 17:00 - 18:00
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- Watch online
- BSL interpreted
- Captioned
One of our finest contemporary writers, Colm Tóibín returns with Long Island: sequel to prize-winning masterpiece, Brooklyn. Penned with characteristic wit, compassion, and quietude, the novel reunites with Eilis Fiorello who is compelled to return to…
Tuesday 20 August 17:45 - 18:45
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Tired of stereotypes of autistic people, author Daniel Tammet set out to meet nine other neurodivergent people from across the globe. Tammet reflects on the nine extraordinary people his book follows, which includes a bestselling author, a detective, and…
Tuesday 20 August 18:45 - 19:45
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Winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences and chief economist of the World Bank, Joseph E Stiglitz this year publishes The Road to Freedom, which takes on the concepts of neoliberalism and free market economics by questioning their effect…
Tuesday 20 August 19:30 - 20:30
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- BSL interpreted
Former cellmate of Nelson Mandela and PM of the Western Cape, Ebrahim Rassol talks with his co-authors, Dr Houda Abadi and Mark Muller Stuart KC, about their new book, A Guide to Islamic Principles of Peace-Making, and why they are needed more than ever…
Tuesday 20 August 21:00 - 22:30
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Storyteller Kirsty Logan, folksinger Kirsty Law and harpist Esther Swift go deep on ‘the double’ for their feminist reimagining of Hogg’s Confessions in contemporary times. In their story, Gill Todd is a young woman growing up in a cult, who is then…
Wednesday 21 August 11:00 - 12:00
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- Captioned
Celebrated French author Anne Serre brings her new novel A Leopard-Skin Hat to the Festival. Already hailed ‘a masterpiece of simplicity, emotion and elegance’ by Le Point, A Leopard-Skin Hat is the story of the narrator’s relationship with his close…
Wednesday 21 August 14:00 - 15:00
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- Watch online
- Captioned
Diplomatic correspondent for the New York Times, Edward Wong covers foreign policy from Washington. Wong’s new account of the last century of change, The Edge of Empire, gives profound insight into a new authoritarian age transforming the world. Join him…
Wednesday 21 August 14:15 - 15:15
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- BSL interpreted
The genesis for Hisham Matar’s latest novel began almost ten years ago when he scribbled two lines on the back of an envelope. The Booker-nominated, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Return shares what happened in the in-between years to result in My…
Wednesday 21 August 16:15 - 17:15
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- BSL interpreted
A short story specialist and winner of the 2022 EM Forster Award and the 2023 Walter Scott Prize, Lucy Caldwell talks to Peggy Hughes about her third collection, Openings, in which the Northern Irish writer continues to write about the contemporary…
Celebrating the 2024 Book Festival 
