HEAD NORTH YOUNG READER
Not content with hosting the world’s largest literary gathering at Edinburgh in August, Scotland now accommodates 37 other book festivals, soon to be linked by a Book Nation initiative to share authors.
One of the fastest-growing and most ambitious is the Borders Book Festival: having started in 2004 with four writers and an audience of 300, it now attracts 8,000 visitors to the walled garden of Harmony House in Melrose. This year it has a strong political theme, with Robert Harris, James Naughtie, Shirley Williams, Fergal Keane and Douglas Hurd among the speakers: “the idea”, says the director, Alistair Moffat, “was to get some cool heads together once the dust from the general election had settled.” The comedians Rory Bremner and Victoria Wood will be there to take a less reverential view.
The new £25,000 Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction is to be launched with appearances by six of the shortlistees, including Hilary Mantel and Adam Foulds, while Michael Morpurgo, a former teacher and a tireless performer, is the main draw for children. Moffat attributes the event’s success to the boom in Scottish writing, from Iain M. Banks to J.K. Rowling, and a national love of “congregation: getting together and arguing”.
Borders Book Festival Melrose, June 17th-20th
Picture Credit: joeandkaty (via Flickr)
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quote It's often seemed to me that Shakespeare might well have been a simply brilliant editor as well as a beyond-extraordinary writer