Birthday bash will honour Livingstone

The David Livingstone Birthplace in Blantyre will highlight the famous explorer’s birthday today (Thursday) with a special event.

Celebrating the well-known Scottish missionary’s birthday on March 19, the David Livingstone Birthplace is hosting Zimbabwean writer Petina Gappah at Summerhall in Edinburgh.

Starting at 7pm at Summerhall’s Main Hall, Gappah will talk to Kate Simpson, a lecturer at Edinburgh Napier University and project scholar for Livingstone Online, about her latest novel Out of Darkness, Shining Light.

It tells the story of an epic journey through nineteenth-century Africa, following the 69 men and women who carried his remains for 1500 miles so that he could be carried across the sea and buried in his own country.

A spokesperson for the event said: “Gappah’s short fiction and essays have been published in eight countries. Her debut story collection, An Elegy for Easterly, won the Guardian First Book Award in 2009, and her first novel, The Book of Memory, was longlisted for the 2015 Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction.

“Petina’s work has also been shortlisted for the Orwell Prize, the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the PEN America Open Book Award, the Frank O’connor International Short Story Award, and the Prix Femina (Étrangers). She is the recipient of the Mckitterick Prize from the Society of Authors.”

The David Livingstone Birthplace, home to the history of Scotland’s famous explorer, is currently undergoing a £6.1 million transformation. This will see his birthplace redeveloped to provide a vibrant new museum, setting Scotland in a global context and celebrating the inspirational story of how a poor millworker became one of the most popular British heroes of the Victorian