This Weekend at Wigtown Book Festival
One of the hottest tickets at Wigtown Book Festival’s second weekend will be for Gavin Barwell – a man who is in high demand for insights into what it will be like right now in 10 Downing Street amidst a political and economic tornado.
Lord Barwell’s book, Chief of Staff, is an account of what it was like being at the heart of government when the wheels came off Theresa May’s administration.
Interviewed on Radio 4’s Today Programme, and in many other places this week, the former adviser has recent and hugely relevant experience of being in the thick of it.
And that’s just the start of what we have on offer. Other great events, speakers and activities to look forward to include:
Friday
The Whithorn Trust Event: Bishops, Bones and Burials – see new talking 3D reconstructions unveiled of a 14th-century woman and high status priest excavated at Whithorn Priory.
Sally Hinchcliffe: Hare House – a folk horror tale on a Scottish estate.
Andrew Cotter: Dog Days – the lockdown hero whose videos of Olive and Mabel cheered millions during the pandemic.
Imogen Stirling: Love the Sinner – show from one of Glasgow’s top poet-performers.
Saturday
Murray Pittock: The Magnusson Lecture – Scotland: The Global History.
Chitra Ramaswamy: Homelands – a true tale of friendship between a girl from India and a refugee from Nazi Germany.
Wigtown Poetry Prize – unveiling the winners of Scotland’s international three-language annual poetry awards.
Sunday
Gavin Esler and Joyce McMillan: Panel discussion – Crisis. What happens next?
Flora Fraser: Pretty Young Rebel – a life of Flora Macdonald.
Gerry Hassan: Scotland Rising – fresh arguments for Scottish political autonomy.
Melinda Salisbury: Her Dark Wings – on an island near the entrance to the underworld lives a modern-day Persephone.
Jack Hunter’s Galloway: a celebration of Wigtownshire’s great chronicler.
All in a Day’s Work: Book launch in which local writers respond to items at The Devil’s Porridge museum which records the history of the vast WWI ordnance factory at Gretna.
And all this comes after a hugely colourful first few days during which some of the biggest hits have been the interactive and intimate ones like Deception Island, a fully immersive arts and poetry experience inside a replica Antarctic scientists’ hut, which takes audiences back to a remote and frozen research station in the late 1950s and 60s.
Other favourites have been two special commissions supported by EventScotland for Scotland’s Year of Stories 2022. One is Into The Nicht, literary and poetic night-time guided walks and the other a performance piece called The Bookshop Untold - a mysterious bookseller who takes audiences on a journey through history, Scottish literature, art, love, and loss.
Among the guests so far have been former Teletubby Nikky Smedley (who played Laa Laa) who met Big Wig, the festival’s children’s mascot, writer, columnist, political activist and rapper Darren McGarvey aka Loki, Deacon Blue frontman Ricky Ross, TV’s Red Shepherdess Hannah Jackson and actor Gerda Stevenson.