Stars set to feature at Boswell Book Festival
AYRSHIRE football star Rose Reilly will be among the star turns at this year’s Boswell Book Festival, organisers have announced.
Rose became the only Scottish person to have won a football World Cup, while playing for Italy in 1983, and features in the new book Spectacular Scottish Women, by Louise Baillie.
She’ll appear at a family-friendly event at 5.30pm on Friday, May 10 - the opening event on this year’s festival programme.
Sharing star billing on the opening evening are the first of this year’s festival poets, former Scottish Makar Jackie Kay, who also features in Louise’s book, and one of the UK’s finest comedic actors, Doon Mackichan, talking about her life and career.
Tickets for all the events at this year’s festival, running from May 10-12, are now on sale.
The festival, named in honour of local writer, James Boswell, the inventor of modern biography, is held at Dumfries House.
Every year, hundreds from across Ayrshire and far beyond turn out to enjoy the festival and the big names who appear on each year’s programme.
Festival director Caroline Knox, who created the event in 2011, said: “Now in our 13th edition our unique theme of biography and memoir reinforces our reputation for attracting the finest writers and performers to what has become one of south-west Scotland’s major cultural events.”
On Saturday two remarkable veterans of the Second World Wa3r will take to the stage to describe their separate experiences of the conflict.
They are Olga Henderson, 92, who is one of the last survivors of a Japanese prisoner of war camp, and 100-year old Patricia Owtram,
who worked as a code-breaker at Bletchley Park and was involved in the planning for D-Day.
Caroline added: “Ever since founding the festival I have taken huge pride in hosting a remarkable group of WW2 survivors, many of whom wrote compelling memoirs which have added to the ever-changing narrative of how the conflict is described.”
The programme on Saturday also includes insider royal correspondent Robert Hardman on Charles III; the world’s most popular history podcaster, Tom Holland, on ancient Rome at its peak; Scottish architect John McAslan, on his game-changing creativity bridging the old and the new as at Kings Cross Station; and East Ayrshire’s own Billy Kay, whose
1986 work, Scots: The Mither Tongue, was adapted for TV that same year, and whose latest book, Born in Kyle: A Love Letter tae an Ayrshire Childhood, written in both Scots and English, looks at his years growing up in Galston.
Sunday’s programme features Times Radio presenter, Aasmah Mir on the highs and lows of growing up between two cultures in Glasgow, and Ayrshire-born international best-seller and screen writer, John Niven on his brother’s death and the life that led up to it.
Also on Sunday, Cumnock’s own Sir James MacMillan will talk to composer Errollyn Wallen about her memoir, Becoming A Composer, while three emerging young non-fiction writers, Kirsty Logan
(The Unfamiliar), Len Pennie (Poyums) and Jen Stout (Night Train to Odessa) will talk about the experience of writing about their own lives alongside those of others.
Most of this year’s events will be live-streamed for those who are unable to attend in person.
And there is also a series of events for children, including an interactive walk around the Dumfries House grounds, all taking place on the Saturday and featuring illustrator Kate Leiper and children’s authors Alan Windram, Vivien French, Chae Strathie and Justin Davies
Find out more about this year’s festival programme, and book tickets, at boswellbookfestival. co.uk.