Edinburgh International Book Festival

Susan Greenfield

Being proactive about identity

14 Aug 2008

Short attention span? Inability to turn down chocolate biscuits? Memory of a long-term dope smoker? Susan Greenfield, the Oxford-based neuroscientist, is hoping to shed light on these problems and more, when she appears here to discuss her latest book.

Charles Leadbeater

Internet ideas man seeks to expand boundaries

14 Aug 2008

‘What excites me about book festivals is the sheer diversity of ideas, viewpoints and styles,’ says Charles Leadbeater. ‘There are so many interesting people who are interesting in different ways.’ Leadbeater is all about ideas. He has advised…

Bookslam

Ripping up the stuffy literary world

14 Aug 2008

‘People think live readings are supposed to be 20-minute monotones about the “quality of light on the mountains” and unfortunately they often are,’ says Alan Bissett, master of ceremonies for a stagefull of Dan Rhodes (pictured), Patience Agbabi and…

Martin Bell

Seeking truth and an end to sleaze

14 Aug 2008

Eleven years after New Labour’s landslide victory, Martin Bell has been considering Tony Blair’s legacy. More specifically, the white suit-wearing BBC war correspondent turned independent MP, and now UNICEF ambassador, wants to work out where it all…

Esther Rantzen

Loving life in the third age

14 Aug 2008

It was the death of her husband Desmond Wilcox that shaped the philosophy behind Esther Rantzen OBE’s new book If Not Now, When? A self-help book, after a fashion, it expands on the virtues of enjoying life at every available opportunity, even into…

Books - hitlist

14 Aug 2008

Anne Enright After winning the Man Booker prize for The Gathering last autumn, the Irish author talks about her latest effort, Taking Pictures, a short-story collection about female lives. 15 Aug, 11.30m, £9 (£7). ] Chuck Palahniuk The creator of cult…

5 questions - Tony Black

14 Aug 2008

New Edinburgh crime prince Tony Black has half an eye on Ian Rankin’s throne. Here he becomes king of our less than majestic Q&A

Top 5 - TV People

14 Aug 2008

Susie Dent Don’t even ask her to be drawn on the subject of the ‘Carol Countdown Controversy’. Along with fellow word fan Henry Hitchings, the nine-letter word expert will be talking about the ever-evolving English language. 20 Aug, 2pm, £9 (£7).

Kids Events

14 Aug 2008

When Miranda Richardson so memorably played the child-like Queen Elizabeth I in Blackadder, a career in entertaining kids seemed to be in the offing. With Horrid Henry (16 Aug) she appears to have finally grasped that opportunity by voicing the little…

Daniel Kalder

14 Aug 2008

It’s not everyone who packs their bags and heads to Tatarstan, Kalmykia, Mari El and Udmurtia – four of the most remote and least frequented republics of Russia. But that is exactly what anti-tourist and travel writer Daniel Kalder did for his debut…

Desert storm

7 Aug 2008

‘The disease in question had, as its main deleterious effect, the fact that it renders its victims perfectly unable to write anything but 500-page books about the civil war in Sudan.’ The ‘victim’ in this case is US author Dave Eggers, but the…

Health Warning

7 Aug 2008

Simon Singh has upset many people with his damning views on holistic treatment. Claire Sawers asks if he has his finger on the pulse of alternative therapy Don’t get Simon Singh started on reiki massage. And as for ear candles or oxygen therapy, that’s…

Danny Wallace

Ghostbusters-obsessed yes man with another voyage of self-discovery

7 Aug 2008

The trailer for a Danny Wallace movie biopic might go something like this: ‘In a time of global terrorism, credit crunching and general fatigue with social networking sites, one committed tea drinker’s relentless optimism in the face of cynicism and…

Celine Curiol

French author celebrates the outsider

7 Aug 2008

Young Parisian author Céline Curiol laughs when I tell her of the proliferation of post-Carla Bruni articles seeking to define the particular character of the French woman, and then makes her apologies for a lack of further insight. ‘I’m going to have…

Paul Gravett

Fighting the anti-comics brigade

7 Aug 2008

Paul Gravett is an acknowledged expert on comics, who started off with comic-marts, before moving into publishing (with titles including Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean’s Violent Cases in the 80s) and writing hundreds of books, articles and columns on…

Helen Fitzgerald

Gruesome tales from Glasgow-based Aussie

7 Aug 2008

Currently writing her fourth thriller, ex-parole officer and social worker turned screenwriter Helen FitzGerald was in perpetual ‘movie development hell’, until her latest rejection prompted her to transform the story into a debut novel. ‘Dead Lovely…

Helen Walsh

Warrington author cleanses the past

7 Aug 2008

If Helen Walsh’s Betty Trask Award-winning debut Brass came from the guts, its follow-up Once Upon a Time in England comes from the heart. Set in the author’s native Warrington, the book charts two decades of English/Malaysian family the Fitzgeralds…

Kapka Kassabova

Travel memoir about Bulgaria from Edinburgh-based scribe

7 Aug 2008

Kapka Kassabova likes to travel. You can tell, because the writer’s accent is all over the place: there’s Eastern European, Antipodean and a hint of Scottish in there as she chats away. Kassabova was raised in Bulgaria before living in New Zealand for…

Thomas Glavinic

Telling a tale about the very nature of being

7 Aug 2008

From Mary Shelley’s The Last Man to I Am Legend, the idea of being the last person alive would seem to have an abiding fascination. Thomas Glavinic’s take on it, Night Work, tracks Jonas, who awakens one morning to discover he has, for reasons that are…

Alan Johnston

Life-enhancing event from ex-hostage

7 Aug 2008

When Alan Johnston was kidnapped at gunpoint in Gaza and held in solitary confinement for 114 days, he used an imaginary wooden life raft and a mind-game called the River of Time to keep himself sane. As the last western journalist who had stayed to…

James Meek

Johnny Depp-friendly author and journo

7 Aug 2008

As well as writing novels, James Meek has spent a lot of time as a journalist reporting from conflict zones, and this experience fed into his latest fictional work, We Are Now Beginning Our Descent. A global book, it ranges from London to rural America…

Ziauddin Sardar

Seeking to redefine British multiculturalism

7 Aug 2008

‘The immense diversity of British Asians even surprised me,’ admits author and journalist Ziauddin Sardar, who has spent the last three years investigating the many identities of Asians in this country. Named after the fabricated ‘Indian’ dish which…

Norman Lebrecht

Cataloguing the classical music industry

7 Aug 2008

Journalist, writer and broadcaster Norman Lebrecht is a long familiar name in classical music criticism. Known to be controversial, what he says is not always to everyone’s liking, but his knowledge of the classical recording industry is undoubtedly…

Top 5: Blur Moments

7 Aug 2008

With Alex James coming to chat about his past life as a Britpop superstar, we reflect on the bits of Blur that we remember ‘There’s No Other Way’ As much of a Madchester rip-off as it was (those guitar lines ride in the slipstream of The Stone…

Hitlist: Festival books

7 Aug 2008

Mohammad Hanif The mysterious death of Pakistan’s President Zia is the start-point of a splendidly silly debut novel A Case of Exploding Mangoes. Certainly wins our vote for book title of the year. 12 Aug, 7.30pm, £6 (£4). Danny Wallace The…