Wigtown Scottish Book Town Autumn Festival 2007

Scotland's most dynamic book festival opens on Friday 28 September with a talk by Northern Ireland's First Minister, Ian Paisley.

More than 80 events include Top Gear's James May, poet and playwright Liz Lochhead, novelists Alasdair Gray, Louis de Bernieres, Christopher Brookmyre and Colin Bateman, Saltire award-winning biographer Maggie Fergusson, former hostage Brian Keenan, food writers Joanna Blythman and Mary Contini, and BBC broadcasters Jeremy Bowen, Rageh Omaar, Lesley Riddoch and Tom Morton.

We highlight a selection of events with a particularly Scottish flavour.

• 12.30pm - Galloway Irish Meets Ulster Scots with Ian McHarg and Willie Drennan

The comic poems of Wigtownshire’s Ian McHarg are matched with the songs of Antrim’s Willie Drennan in this lighthearted celebration of Galloway Irish and Ulster-Scots. The event takes place on the Stena HSS fast ferry between Belfast and Stranraer, the perfect location to reunite these estranged linguistic cousins.

• 10.30am - Scotland's Books with Robert Crawford

From Treasure Island to Trainspotting, Scotland’s literature has had a disproportionately large effect on the rest of the world. In Scotland’s Books, Robert Crawford – acclaimed poet and Professor of Modern Scottish Literature at the University of St Andrews – presents 15 centuries of the nation’s literary history in a single volume for the first time. A must for anyone who cares about Scottish writing.

• 12noon - The Magnusson Memorial Lecture: Allan Massie

Magnus Magnusson was a regular visitor to Wigtown Book Festival. He loved it and described it warmly - “What a wonderful place! My favourite book festival.” His last delightful performance at the 2006 Festival was only a few weeks before he died, and it was decided to initiate an annual lecture in his name to celebrate his connection with Wigtown.
Magnus had a gift and a passion for language, so it is appropriate that the topic of the inaugural lecture, given by author Allan Massie, will be “our changing language”. Introduced by Sally Magnusson.

• 12noon - The Wigtown Poetry Competition: Launch with Robert Crawford

Dumfries & Galloway Arts Association invite you to join them for a glass of wine to launch Scotland’s largest poetry competition. This year’s judge, Robert Crawford, will read from his work and describe what he looks for in a great poem – essential advice if you want to be a serious contender!

• 1.30pm - Alasdair Gray - Old Men in Love

Widely regarded as Scotland’s greatest living novelist, the author of Lanark discusses his work and reads from his eagerly anticipated new novel. Like The Arabian Nights, Old Men in Love is about a storyteller whose stories contain other stories: Renaissance Florence and Victorian Somerset mingle with Britain under the New Labour Party, viewed from Glasgow’s West End.

• 3pm - Lesley Riddoch: The Outer Hebrides

Funny, frank and fearless as ever, the broadcaster discusses her bicycle journey through the Western Isles, which hold up an alternative way of life to the worldly, debt-ridden Scottish mainland. Is small about to become beautiful again, or are Hebrideans hiding from the size and speed of mainstream life?

• 3pm - Rodge Glass and Glen Patterson: Fireworks Party

Two great novelists – from Scotland and Northern Ireland respectively. Glass’s captivating No Fireworks recounts eight extraordinary days in the life of an ordinary man who can no longer put off answering life’s big questions. Set in Hiroshima, where frantic consumerism exists alongside the atom bomb’s enduring shadow, Patterson’s The Third Party is an explosive collision of East and West.

• 12noon - The McNeillie Lecture: John Pick on the Legacy of Neil Gunn

Born the son of a fisherman in Caithness in 1891, Neil Gunn is perhaps Scotland’s greatest exponent of rural writing, a brilliantly sharp-eyed observer of the Highlands undergoing change. His friend and biographer explains why the author of The Silver Darlings deserves his place in the pantheon of Scottish writers, focussing on Gunn’s sense of place.

• 12noon - The Two Ravens Press

Two writers from Scotland’s exciting new publishing company, Two Ravens Press. Journalist Tom Lappin (Parties) and Edinburgh GP Peter Dorward (Nightingale) read from their books and talk about how to get into print for the first time.

• 3pm - Hugo Rifkind: Overexposure

Macaulay Lewis is a showbusiness reporter on a London newspaper, tormented by the fact he’s not as famous as the people he writes about: so what better way to grab the headlines than to catch a celebrity cat-burglar? In his wickedly funny first novel, Rifkind uses his inside knowledge of being The Times newspaper’s diarist, to satirise both Fleet St and celebrity culture. Find out what really happens behind the headlines.

• 1.30pm - Marista Leishman: Reith of the BBC

Lord Reith is revered as the founder of the BBC. But, in his private life, this son of the Manse was a domineering figure who admired Hitler and tyrannised his own family. In a remarkably candid family memoir, his daughter reveals the feet of clay of a broadcasting pioneer.

• 3pm - Kenneth Steven: Salt and Light

Salt and Light is Kenneth Steven’s seventh collection of poems from Saint Andrew Press. Much of the work is inspired by the wild landscapes of the Hebrides and by Celtic Christianity. Calming, meditative magic.

• 3pm - Mary Contini: Dear Olivia

Mary Contini is a renowned cook and partner in Edinburgh’s famous Valvona & Crolla delicatessen. In the follow-up to her hugely successful Dear Francesca, she reveals the untold story of her Italian family’s struggle to make a new life for themselves in Britain. A moving insight into the lives of the first Italian-Scots and a mouth-watering call to the kitchen.

• 1.30pm - Louis de Paor and Aonghas MacNeacail: Irish Gaeilge meets Scots Gaidhlig

Louis de Paor, the Director of Irish Studies at Ireland’s National University in Galway is one of the best-known poets in the Irish language. Aonghas MacNeacail is one of the most highly considered poets in Scots Gaelic. Come and discover how closely related these two ancient languages really are, as you hear poetry from their latest collections.

• 10am - Maggie Fergusson: George Mackay Brown

George Mackay Brown: A Life is an extraordinary portrayal of the Orcadian poet who is one of Scotland’s best loved writers. This first biography of the reclusive genius won the Scottish Arts Council Biographical Book of the Year and the Saltire First Book of the Year awards, and was shortlisted for the Costa Biography award. Maggie will discuss the challenges she faced when writing the biography and answer your questions.

• 2pm - Janet Paisley: Not For Glory

An award-winning writer of prose, poetry, plays and scripts, Janet is one of the nation’s most popular writers and performers. Her work gives voice to those who are often forgotten. Today she talks about and reads from Not For Glory, her 2001 collection of inter-linked short stories set in a small village in central Scotland, where life is ‘like livin oan an intersection whaur everythin goes by and nothin comes in’.

• 10.30am - David Pratt: Intifada: The Long Day of Rage

The ‘Intifada’ has become a byword for resistance to Israeli occupation in the Occupied Territories. Yet, despite the term’s frequent use, most people remain unclear what it is or how it began. In this incisive book, David Pratt, foreign editor of the Sunday Herald, explains the origins of the Palestinian uprising.

• 10.30am - Janet Paisley: White Rose Rebel

Based on the extraordinary true story of Colonel Anne Farqhuarson of Invercauld, who fought for the Jacobites in 1745, Janet Paisley’s new novel explores the grand themes of civil war, love and marital discord, loyalty and betrayal, women’s rights and national identity with an unforgettable cast of characters. “A hot little kilt-lifter”, Sunday Times.

• 11am - Jim Hewitson: The Scots at Sea

With 11,250 miles of coast, Scotland has always been heavily dependent on the sea. The Orcadian author celebrates the nation’s maritime history, focusing on some of the major aspects of that remarkable story – including whaling, shipbuilding, fishing, naval warfare, emigration and exploration.

• 1pm - Liz Lochhead - Desert Island Books

Rarely at a loss for a joke, the Motherwell-born poet and playwright is one of the most well-kent and best loved figures on Scotland’s literary scene. Here she talks about her life and work, while whittling down her library to 10 essential books.

• 2.30pm - Rosmary Goring: Scotland: The Autobiography

The author talks to Sheena McDonald about her account of Scotland’s history, as witnessed by those who experienced it first-hand. Using the words of inventors and writers, factory workers and shipbuilders, survivors of Bannockburn and Culloden, Goring builds an engrossingly original picture of the nation’s past.