EIBF Events on Wednesday 15th August

Reith of the BBC

10.00am - Marista Leishman with Richard Holloway

  • Lived Lives - RBS Main Theatre

The daughter of Lord Reith, founder of the BBC, gives a devastatingly honest insight into the volcanic contradictions of the giant figure (in all senses) who was a media legend but whose personal life was complex, damaged and dramatic.

The Pure Land

11.00am - Alan Spence

  • Fine Fiction - Peppers Theatre

One of the best-loved and quietly skilful of all contemporary Scottish writers, Alan Spence, director of Aberdeen’s Word Festival, looks upon the world with fresh and perceptive eyes. His latest novel The Pure Land, drawn from his deep love of the East, tells of the Aberdonian who helped found modern Japan.

11.30am - Ruth Rendell in Conversation with Ian Rankin

  • Meet the author - RBS Main Theatre

One of the finest exponents of intelligent crime writing at work today, Ruth Rendell is one of the UK’s foremost literary figures. Her work – including the brand new Not In The Flesh, her latest murder mystery featuring Chief Inspector Wexford – is cool, measured and captivating. Come and meet an artist at the height of her powers.

6.00pm - Angus Dunn and Mark McNay

  • First Fiction - Writers' Retreat

Two starkly contrasting debut Scottish novelists. Mark McNay had already won a major prize for Fresh before publication. Set in a chicken factory, it is urban, demotic, naturalistic and not for the queasy of stomach. Angus Dunn, an important figure in writing in the Highlands for many years, sets an atmospheric fantasy in the rural north in Writing In The Sand.

Dark Flight

7.00pm - Lin Anderson and Alanna Knight

  • Crime - Peppers Theatre

Settle back and enjoy these two leading tale-spinners on the Scottish crime scene. Lin Anderson is gathering great acclaim across the UK for her series featuring forensic scientist Rhona Macleod, of which the latest is Dark Flight. Alanna Knight has written over forty books of impeccable historical detail and sense of place.

8.30pm - Christopher Rush

  • Lived Lives - ScottishPower Studio Theatre

A childhood by the North Sea in a fishing village of Fife informs much of Christopher Rush’s work, including the acclaimed film Venus Peter. Hellfire and Herring evokes that boyhood of a bygone age with high lyricism – a hymn to Scottish upbringing with, as one reviewer said, ‘salt water in its veins’.