Reviews & features: Book Festival

How to visit the Edinburgh Festival

A guide to getting the best from the Edinburgh Festival and Fringe

The phrase 'planned itinerary' might might be at odds with the spirit of chaos and wild abandon you associated with your visit to the Edinburgh Festival. The brutal truth is that shows do sell out, so book tickets to things you definitely want to see.

Philip Pullman - The Good Man Jesus and The Scoundrel Christ

'The Most Dangerous Author in Britain' comes to the Book Festival

You will know him by the horns, of course, and the casual air of unholy sin. For Philip Pullman is the anti-God and ‘The Most Dangerous Author in Britain’, according to the modern gospel of The Mail on Sunday. To most of us, however, he is the avuncular…

Scotrail announce expanded Edinburgh Festival 2012 train timetable

Additional night services to Glasgow, Dundee, Perth and North Berwick

New late-night train services to and from Edinburgh will make it easier for those outside the city to visit the 2012 festival. In Glasgow, there will be a Fringe box office at Queen Street station from July 27. Tickets bought online in advance can be…

Nick Kent: The rock journo who became the story

Apathy for the Devil will have plenty to talk about at the Book Festival

‘When you get right down to it, the memory is a deceitful organ to have to rely on,’ reflects notorious rock scribe Nick Kent in the opening lines of his memoir, Apathy for the Devil. But even Kent’s near-fatal rock’n’roll lifestyle couldn’t wholly…

Christos Tsiolkas' The Slap touched a few raw nerves

He tells us how he tackled this multi-story tale.

Judge me once you’ve walked a mile in my shoes, the old saying goes. Well in his latest book, The Slap, Christos Tsiolkas hands us the literary equivalent of eight pairs of walking boots. Set in suburban Melbourne, the novel opens with a chapter devoted…

Loung Ung

Edinburgh International Book Festival

Edinburgh International Book Festival Surviving the peace Author, campaigner and victim of Pol Pot’s regime in Cambodia, bestselling writer Loung Ung talks to Allan Radcliffe about how she managed to carry on after the hell of the killing fields

Richard Milward on karma and a girl called Kimberly

The writer reads from latest book at the Faber Social Unbound event in Charlotte Square

‘One of the best books I’ve ever read about being young, working class and British,’ said Irvine Welsh of Richard Milward’s 2007 debut, Apples. The 27-year-old followed it with Ten Storey Love Song (2009), a riotous tale of tower-block living written in…

Lauren St John at the Book Festival

Writing for a more honest and passionate reader

Remember those series of books you would read as a child? Remember how, when you discovered a new one, you’d just have to devour it as quickly as possible, gobbling up boarding-school tales of lacrosse and midnight feasts and adventure after adventure…

James Robertson - And the Land Lay Still

One of Scotland's most vital authors tackles our Q&A

James Robertson has been long-listed for the Man Booker Prize of 2006 for The Testament of Gideon Mack and has just published And The Land Lay Still.

Award-winning journalist James Meek to speak at Edinburgh Book Festival

Meek will speak on his upcoming novel and the importance of book festivals

James Meek’s upcoming novel, The Heart Broke In, is billed as ‘a seductive drama full of scandal, dilemmas, love and sacrifice’. Coupled with his previous form, the acclaimed The People’s Act of Love and We Are Now Beginning Our Descent, the Charlotte…

Sarah Hall talks of new book Beautiful Indifference at 2012 Edinburgh International Book Festival

Cultured finesse in Booker shortlisted authoress' new work

The Scottish writer Douglas Dunn once gave Sarah Hall a crucial piece of advice while she studied Creative Writing under him at St Andrews: ‘Sarah, why don’t you try writing in sentences?’ Dunn must be very proud of her now given the quality of…

Unusual highlights from Edinburgh Festival 2012 programme

Barges, a spoken word section, free shows from big names and more

Dip in for some watery goings-on at the Art Festival as Tania Kovats invites you on a canal boat trip on 3 August. The vessel sets sail from behind Cargo on Fountainbridge at 9am, making the return voyage from Jupiter Artland at 3pm. Call 01506 889 900…

EIBF 2011: Christopher Brookmyre adopts subtle pseudonym for latest work - interview

Chris, not Christopher, for Where the Bodies are Buried

When Christopher Brookmyre has three syllables thrown at him, he knows he’s done something wrong. Despite his full first-name appearing on every book jacket since his debut novel in 1997, those around Brookmyre have called him Chris for years. ‘I tend…

Interview: Jon Ronson - The Psychopath Test

Author on madness, public appearances and panicking unnecessarily

During his career, he’s met a sports commentator who believes giant lizards rule the world and encountered Christians who donate human kidneys for Jesus. In his new book Jon Ronson learns the skills for spotting psychopaths. Brian Donaldson wonders…

Horror Stories for Kids at 2011 Edinburgh Book Festival

Darren Shan, Barry Hutchison & Alexander Gordon Smith talk horror

As far as groundings in the horror business go, young adult writer Barry Hutchison knew exactly what fear was from an early age. ‘I lived in a perpetual state of terror when I was a kid,’ says the Fort William-based creator of the Invisible Fiends…

Interview: Ali Smith - There but for the

Scottish writer appears at 2011 Edinburgh Book Festival

There can be few more anxious experiences for an author than turning to the literary section of a newspaper as the book they have slogged over for possibly years is taken apart by a faceless critic. One national paper gave Ali Smith the fright of her…

Five Edinburgh Book Festival guests you'll know from TV

Lucy Worsley, Bettany Hughes, Alexei Sayle, Kirsty Wark and Peter Taylor

Lucy Worsley Delving into the intimate history of old homes and buildings is Worsley’s prime passion and her BBC Four series and book If Walls Could Talk pretty much sums it up. During her years of research, she has uncovered the fact that bedrooms…

Julia Donaldson - Simon Puttock, Vivian French and Guy Bass on the new Children’s Laureate

Author events set for 2011 Edinburgh Book Festival

‘Julia Donaldson is unique in the nicest way,’ says former Book Festival Children’s Writer in Residence Vivian French. ‘She’s passionate about stories, whether in the form of books, songs or plays, and her enthusiasm is infectious.’ French is…

Advertising, Mad Men and the future - John Hegarty interview

Advertising guru set for Edinburgh Book Festival 2011

"In the end, virtually everything I work on is, to a certain extent, irrelevant." After the best part of an hour's chat in which John Hegarty has pretty much sold me on the unparalleled joys and benefits of advertising, it's a refreshing shock to the…

Why Edinburgh remains unrivalled as a festival city

A huge number and variety of festivals take place each year

In 1961, a theatre director made a proposal. It was his opinion that the Edinburgh Festival Fringe was getting too big. It would be much better, he said, ‘if only ten halls were licensed’. Nobody listened. Had the director been able to travel…

Andrew O'Hagan's novel looks set to be turned into a feature film

The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, And of His Friend Marilyn Monroe

The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, And of His Friend Marilyn Monroe is not your run-of-the-mill contemporary novel, and not just because the eponymous first-person narrator is an aristocratic Maltese terrier with Trotskyist tendencies, owned by the…

Fatima Bhutto's Songs of Blood and Sword

Benazir Bhutto's niece tells her criticizing story.

Mystery still surrounds the murder of Benazir Bhutto in 2007 but while people like her niece Fatima are around to ask questions, there’s always some chance that the puzzle might yet be solved. Not that Fatima has the family blinkers on as she was an…

Will Self at the Edinburgh International Book Festival

A is for Alice in Wonderland A voracious reader as a child, Will Self skipped between adult and kids’ fiction, including reading all 650 pages of Frank Herbert’s Dune at the age of ten. But the book that had the biggest impact on the mind of the young…

Martin Creed: Down Over Up - Edinburgh Art Festival

The Turner Prize winner on his Festival work

Renaissance Man Martin Creed is on the Fringe and at the Book Festival as well as stirring up the art world this August. Rosalie Doubal hears from an artist who wants to fully explore the process of living

An overview of the 2010 Edinburgh Festivals and their directors

What to expect from Edinburgh in August

Nowhere does a festival quite like Edinburgh, and even with the film folk having long moved out of August, there is more than plenty going on for lovers of art, literature, comedy, theatre, kids entertainment, music, dance and military displays. The…