Book
| 02 September 2009
RBS Main Theatre
31 August, 11.30
It’s lucky for Antonia Fraser that narrative histories became fashionable. Obviously she has reaped great success from its return a la mode, but also because one gets the impression Lady Fraser simply could not constrain herself to simply tell us the facts and trends.
| 02 September 2009
RBS Main Theatre
27 August, 15.00
It was apparent from the outset that the audience demographic was on the silver-haired side but this did not, tellingly, detract from an interesting and stimulating session.
| 01 September 2009
RBS Main Theatre
30 August, 21.00
Don’t be fooled by Margaret Atwood’s appearance. A head of tight, powder-grey curls, hands and feet demurely crossed, she looks sweet, though she avoids fragility, and looks as though she would offer you tea and talk sewing patterns and grandchildren.
| 01 September 2009
RBS Main Theatre
30 August 20.00
Normally on entering an event such as this you are reminded, or rather told, to turn all mobile devises off. It would be in Douglas Coupland’s allotted hour that roughly 600 people were asked to swap numbers with someone nearby and ring each other to create a Cell Phone Sonata!
| 28 August 2009
RBS Main Theatre
26 August, 20.00
‘Pandaemonium’ is right! Within the first few pages of his new book, Christopher Brookmyre presents us with a bus-load of teenagers bent on farting, singing rude songs, sexual innuendo, wrestling over a guitar... and as if that weren’t enough, someone manages to set the bus (not to mention one of the teenagers) on fire, causing the coach driver to crash and kill a deer...
| 26 August 2009
ScottishPower Studio Theatre
23 August, 19.00
Sharon Olds is a funny mixture. Stepping tentatively onto the stage in her black two-piece, an incongruous sparkly lock in her flowing grey hair, she looks benign and witchy.
| 26 August 2009
RBS Main Theatre
24 August, 20.00
Vince Cable has had a multicoloured career. Deputy leader of the Lib Dems, he’s previously been a diplomat, civil servant, high-flying economist, and even acting party leader in the pre-Clegg days. Oh, and, so chairman Brian Taylor delightedly informed a packed RBS marquee, he’s also an ace ballroom dancer.
| 24 August 2009
Scottish Power Studio Theatre
20th August, 12.00
Discussing his new book Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History David Aaronovitch was captivating from beginning to end. It perhaps should have come as no surprise that the audience was full of vehement conspiracy theorists wanting to get their oar in, and David did very well to hold his ground.
| 24 August 2009
Scottish Power Studio Theatre
22 August, 15.30
Sedaris is so unexpected. Dressed in khaki trousers (not corduroy or denim) and a smart shirt, Sedaris, a man short in stature, appears to be normal, or rather, boring. Not at all the type of gentleman that would, moments later, smilingly divulge the horrors of defecated American dressing rooms, or light-heatedly tell a story about the highly-homosexual purchase of a four pound box of condoms and strawberries from Costco.
| 23 August 2009
RBS Main Theatre
21 August, 13.30
It’s the conventional approach to read books before attempting to write your own. But to those luckily endowed with a natural genius and wit alike to Griff Rhys Jones’s, this need not apply.
| 18 August 2009
Charlotte Square Gardens
15 August, 20.00
The pressure must be intense. Duffy’s recital is given such a glowing introduction that I feel nervous for this poet of soul-exposing verse, suddenly thrust into the limelight.
| 17 August 2009
RBS Main Stage
Saturday 15 August 18.30
Garrison arrived, luggage in hand, jeans three inches too short, bright red trainers and geeky specs: it was perfect.
| 02 August 2009
Can you dig it?
A lightening bolt of inspiration inspired Tracy Chevalier, author of Girl With a Pearl Earring, to write about an unusual fossil hunter from Lyme Regis.
| 02 August 2009
A wanted man
Comic writer Mark Millar talks Angelina Jolie, Jack Nicholson, and why he thinks graphic novels still have a touch of the pirate about them.
| 02 August 2009
King of the road
Frank Skinner’s going back to his roots, compering a variety show for the modern age and writing about the journey he took to get there.
| 02 August 2009
The good fight
After a stolen childhood as a soldier in Sudan, rapper Emmanuel Jal is still fighting, but now it’s for the rights and education of other African kids.
| 02 August 2009
When Cherie Blair’s memoir was first published in May last year, she braced herself for a gale of hostility. “I rather expected it,” she says. “I don’t claim to be superhuman, and not hurt by some of the things that are written about me, but I am used to people having this image of me when they have never met me, let alone spoken to me. The book was my attempt to redress that.”
| 02 August 2009
Poet to the people
Carol Ann Duffy is racking up a lot of firsts – she’s the first Scottish, first female and first openly bisexual Poet Laureate. But is she intimidated? Never.
