When the final happy class of tiny Book Festival fans left the gardens, the site was closed for 2010, and it was time to break out the ice cream. One more exciting August of literary dedication over with; and what an August it’s been.
Audiences at the Book Festival were captivated by…
- Over 750 Book Festival participants from 50 countries
- Nobel Laureates Joseph Stiglitz, Amartya Sen and Seamus Heaney
- Poets Laureate Carol Ann Duffy and Keorapetse ‘Willie’ Kgositsile from
- 10 of the 13 authors long-listed for the 2010 Man Booker Prize
- Exclusive pre-publication readings from Seamus Heaney, Will Self and Michael Frayn
- The first appearance in
- The delivery of the Donald Dewar Memorial Lecture by ex-Chancellor Alistair Darling
- Launches of memoirs from Candia McWilliam, Vidal Sassoon and Nicholas Parsons
- Unbound, our innovate and electrifying ‘mini-festival’
- The unique debut authors up for our Readers’ First Book Award
- A variety of stimulating themes, including our absorbing Elsewhere theme
- Sell out events and record signing queues for children’s writers Robert Muchamore, Cressida Cowell and Julia Donaldson
- The closing of the public programme with a moving tribute to recently-deceased Scottish Makar Edwin Morgan
Staff at the Book Festival…
- Built a Book Festival
- Got ducks. But then they were ab-duck-ted!
- Dove into action as protestors gatecrashed the Joseph Stiglitz event
- Was infiltrated by Kate Silverton from BBC Radio 5 Live
- Was clamped for standing still for too long!
- Had our faces painted
- Dodged Jeanette Winterson’s flying oranges
- Welcomed Directors of years gone by
- Got trapped in a big orange box (er, I’ll explain later)
- On the count of “three” charged wildly in a mad stampede towards shelves of free books
- Completed a Book Festival
To sum up, one of our lovely sponsors reported to us that as she left
