Undiscovered Scotland

 

With a number of longer established and larger festivals such as the Fringe and the International Festival competing for your attention, it is too easy to overlook the joys of the Edinburgh International Book Festival, held in the University of Edinburgh’s Futures Institute and in venues close by, in the second half of August each year.

The Book Festival started life as a biennial festival in 1983, becoming an annual event in 1997. Now the world's biggest book festival, the Edinburgh International Book Festival sees capacity audiences, not just for world-renowned writers and thinkers, but also for new and international authors little known in the UK.

In 2024 the core of the Book Festival moved to its new home, the Edinburgh Futures Institute at Lauriston Place. The programme included over 500 events, featuring speakers from more than 40 countries. Authors and illustrators joined the festival from across the globe to share their stories, ideas and perspectives and there were in-person events for adults, children and teens, plus live streamed events on the Book Festival website. Over 100,000 visits were made to Futures Institute over the 16 days of the festival, with thousands of curious passers-by exploring and enjoying the new site, as well as almost 70,000 in-person ticket holders. (Continues below images...)

 

Audiences enjoyed sessions with authors from every genre, welcomed exclusive previews of upcoming new books, as well as enjoying first sightings of new writing. The 2024 programme brought together authors and participants including Margaret Atwood and Salman Rushdie, Richard Osman, Alan Cumming and Forbes Masson, Phillipa Gregory, Jackie Kay, Marian Keyes and Roger McGough, as well as greats from the literary sector, stars of music and film, theatre makers, producers, publishers, artists and actors. Voices from across the political spectrum also joined the conversation, with appearances from John Swinney, Jess Phillips, Caroline Lucas, Andy Burnham and Sadiq Khan.

The Festival was themed 'Future Tense' and tackled topics of global importance ranging from AI to the climate crisis, capitalism to the war in the Middle East, migration to inheritance, and more besides. There were a number of new format events, including the 'Perambulations of a Justified Sinner' digital experience and the intimate 'Have Lunch With…' series at Elliott's Studio, featuring chef-writers Asma Khan, Sami Tamimi and Rachel Roddy. Another, 'Clean Money: Can Fundraising Ever Be Ethical' brought together audience members with a variety of views to discuss modern arts funding.

More than 4,500 school children from 89 schools and across years P1 to S6, attended free events and each received a free book, supported by the final instalment of Baillie Gifford's funding. Authors including Andrew O'Hagan, Amy Liptrot, Jenni Fagan and Joseph Coelho also attended schools, prisons and local Reading Centres as part of the Book Festival's year-round Communities programme.

The Book Festival's retail partner, Waterstones, which has replaced the Festval-run bookshops of previous years, saw sales of 31,000 books, with the most popular being Alex Howard's Edinburgh-set 'The Ghost Cat'.

The Book Festival is the largest public celebration of books and ideas in the world. Since the success and international prominence of the 2004 Book Festival, there has been rapid progress in developing Edinburgh's status as a major year-round literary centre. This resulted, in October 2004, in UNESCO's declaration of Edinburgh as the world's first ever City of Literature. Work is underway to create an international network of such cities, based on the Edinburgh model.

The core of the festival are the events that bring together authors and their readers. These include a series of book signings throughout the festival, as well as talks, interviews, discussions and more, all held inside the Futures Institute itself, in outdoor spaces hosting children's events, in the Spiegeltent and at other venues close by.

There is plenty of space to just sit back and relax, taking in the unique atmosphere generated by a gathering of like-minded people interested in understanding more about the world of books. Refreshments are available on site, with a choice of food vendors and a bar and, with any luck, visitors can also enjoy blue skies in Edinburgh in August.