A Life in music: ‘Desert Island Discs’ with a Difference
by Carol Carr
The Boswell Book Festival – the world’s only festival of biography has an impressive line-up of authors this year, all celebrating the remarkable achievement of James Boswell (1740-1795), who invented the genre of modern biography with his Life of Samuel Johnson in 1791.
James Naughtie
Picture: David Graeme-Baker
This year marks the 250th anniversary of the young James Boswell’s first meeting with Samuel Johnson which took place in Covent Garden, London. To celebrate this, The Boswell Trust will be holding a special breakfast at 80 Albemarle Street, London on Thursday 16th May where John Sessions, famous for his portrayal of Boswell will be leading the day’s events with readings from Boswell’s writings. Yale’s Dr. Gordon Turnbull will evaluate the significance of the meeting between the two literary geniuses.
The Book Festival launches the next day in Ayrshire in Scotland and among those authors speaking at this year’s third festival are James Naughtie, Artemis Cooper with her biography of travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor, James Robertson with his much anticipated novel, The Professor of Truth – a fictitious account of one man’s search for the truth on the Lockerbie bombing, Jane Ridley with her biography of Bertie, Edward V11, Lindsey Davis of renowned Falco fame, as well as Tam Dalyell, the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry and Ayrshire’s Commander John Lorimer DSO.
Dramatic performances include a world première written and performed by John Sessions with actor and much loved radio voice Nigel Anthony and a thoroughly racy revival of John Byrne’s play Bohemian Rhapsody, on the great Ayrshire born artists Colquhoun and MacBryde starring Gavin Mitchell and Neil McKinven.
John Byrne
Stellar Nights – A book festival first! Music Festivals do it, now it’s the turn of the Boswell Book Festival. ‘Stellar Nights’ offers on-site camping in tents, Yurts and Tipis in the Arcadian glades surrounding Auchinleck House. There’s live music too with Moishe’s Bagel and the Ayrshire Fiddle Orchestra to keep the party going well into the night.
Bozzy’s Book Buzz is the first ever non-fiction festival for children with five of the best children’s writers descending on our local schools to talk about their subjects and writing. That’s an ‘extra’ in advance of the main festival on Friday 10th May. An alternative ‘extra’ is the appearance of ‘Hero the Horse’ and his owner Alexander the Great’s horseman who, in revealing their own past life stories could well be creating a new genre of biography! Meanwhile the highly popular tours of Georgian Auchinleck House guided by Yale’s head of the project publishing Boswell’s papers, Dr Gordon Turnbull will be complemented for the first time with guided tours of Auchinleck Estate with leading Enlightenment scholar Dr William Zachs.
Caroline Knox, BBF Founder and Director said: “We’ve a stellar cast of speakers lined up in a programme packed with original events on and off the Festival campus – a wonderfully diverse programme of memoir and biography, lyrical travel, spiritual quest and historical adventure. Boswell would have thoroughly approved of us creating enjoyment for others in his home environment while celebrating his own literary passion – people’s life stories.”
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