"Roddy Doyle"

Mental health TV drama Takin’ Over the Asylum set for stage adaptation

Donna Franceschild on adapting landmark TV series feat David Tennant and Ken Stott for the stage

Not one for the simple life, Donna Franceschild gave herself what has to be one of the hardest jobs in showbusiness. How do you cut down five hours of your own mid-90s television drama and turn it into a two-hour stageplay set in the here and now? Not…

Edinburgh Book Festival 2012 day planner

Julia Donaldson, AC Grayling, AL Kennedy, Alexander McCall Smith and more

Saturday 11 Julia Donaldson The Glasgow-based Children’s Laureate kicks off the Book Festival with a performance-based show in which she brings life to stories such as The Gruffalo and Superworm. Hubbie Malcolm will be on hand to help things along.

First Writes: Kerry Hudson on her first novel

Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice-Cream Float Before He Stole My Ma

Give us five words to describe Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice-Cream Float Before He Stole My Ma? Profane, funny, tender, council-estate, debut. I know I’m pushing it with that hyphen. Name one author who should be more famous than they are now? AM…

Roddy Doyle: Bullfighting

A collection of short stories from the Irish master storyteller

(Jonathan Cape) Having shouldered the full weight of 20th-century Irish history, Roddy Doyle is now almost visibly loosening up. His Last Roundup trilogy may largely have been a thing of literary beauty, but there will be readers relieved to see him…

Roddy Doyle set for two events at Edinburgh Book Festival

He may be one of Ireland’s greatest living writers, but Roddy Doyle is someone who cares not for being trapped into a single generic pigeonhole as his two events at Charlotte Square Gardens prove. In one, he discusses the history of modern Ireland…

Work by photographer Chris Close returns to 2010 Edinburgh Book Festival

Portraits of visiting authors appear in Charlotte Square for second year

Chris Close, the photographer behind last year's successful 'almost live' photography display at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, is set to return to Charlotte Square this year with a new series of portraits of visiting authors. Visiting…

Further Edinburgh Book Festival highlights 2010

In addition to events featuring Will Self, Heather Brooke and youth fiction-writers Tohby Riddle, John Green, Meg Rosoff, Cathy Cassidy there are plenty more highlights in the Edinburgh Book Festival programme.

Wigtown Book Festival 2010

‘The best way to explain the Wigtown Book Festival is to explain Wigtown first of all,’ says festival director Adrian Turpin. ‘It’s Scotland’s National Book Town, which means it has lots of bookshops and book businesses. It’s like a mini Hay-on-Wye…

Roddy Doyle - The Dead Republic

(Jonathan Cape) The Dead Republic constitutes the final part of Roddy Doyle’s historical trilogy, The Last Roundup, which attempts to address a century of Irish history through the irascible figure of Henry Smart. When we meet Henry, his days of…

Wigtown Book Festival

Edinburgh might have the biggest book festival in the world but Wigtown stands up as an individual one the with over 150 events over ten days, mixing up big names like Roddy Doyle (pictured), Julia Donaldson and Nick Nairn with local specials including…

Scottish Books - Irvine Welsh, Alan Bissett and Ewan Morrison

Irvine Welsh inspired a generation of young Scottish writers and showed there was literature to be found in the lives of the Scottish underdog. Two of the leading lights of that next generation are Alan Bissett and Ewan Morrison. Both authors boast…

Roddy Doyle

(Jonathan Cape)

In light of the lucrative offers put his way over the years to pen a full sequel to his 1987 classic The Commitments, it’s so very Roddy Doyle that he instead gave one of the book’s major characters – manager Jimmy Rabbite – a rebirth in the pages of a…

Roddy Doyle

Paula Spencer (Jonathan Cape)

SOCIAL DRAMA Epic historical trilogies must be a hell of a grind. So, you can forgive Roddy Doyle for taking his eye temporarily off the ball of his Last Roundup series (two down: A Star Called Henry and Oh, Play that Thing, one to come in, probably…