David Robinson

The Edinburgh Book Festival round-up profiles talks by Tom Holland, Alexander McCall Smith and John Kampfner. Holland discussed his long-standing fascination with Roman history, Proust and storytelling, as well as The Rest Is History podcast. McCall Smith reflected humorously on the success of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency and proposed unconventional ideas involving dry-cleaning novels and phone-filled train coaches. Kampfner advocated adapting Japan’s multigenerational public-housing model to reduce loneliness among older people and encourage social responsibility among students.

David Robinson reviews Edinburgh International Book Festival events featuring Margaret Drabble, Jeremy Hunt and Simon Kuper. Drabble’s discussion of memory, aging and literary language is portrayed as unexpectedly revealing and intellectually engaging. Hunt outlines ideas for improving UK economic performance, including welfare reductions, lower energy costs and expanded drilling, while drawing lessons from France and Australia. Kuper offers a pessimistic assessment of Scotland’s football prospects and criticizes FIFA president Gianni Infantino’s likely re-election, recommending a long-term youth-development approach instead.

The Edinburgh Book Festival featured discussions with Sara Sheridan, Saara el-Arifi, Nikita Gill and Susan Orlean. Sheridan described her historical novel The Jewel Keepers as a corrective to male-centred history, particularly in its portrayal of ordinary women and John Knox. El-Arifi discussed her personal and scholarly connection to Cleopatra and her decision to foreground Cleopatra’s relationship with her maidservant Charmian. Gill offered a revisionist interpretation of Hekate and other Greek myths, challenging Hesiod’s portrayal of female figures. Orlean’s discussion of her New Yorker career prompted the writer to buy her memoir.

David Robinson reviews events at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, organized around the theme “Can You Change Your Mind?” Highlights include Jackie Kay and Anne Enright on changing perspectives through comedy, Gavin Francis’s compassionate challenge to rigid mental-health diagnoses, Naomi Ishiguro’s fiction and Mark Haddon’s reflections on family, memoir and listening. The review also covers Peter Apps’s stark warnings about war involving Russia, Ukraine, China and Taiwan, Lina Khatib’s more optimistic view of Lebanon, Yi-Ling Liu’s account of Chinese censorship and online resistance, and Orlando Swayne’s evidence that intensive therapy can help people recover from severe brain injuries.

The Scotsman previews the 2026 Edinburgh International Book Festival, highlighting events with Lyse Doucet, David Olusoga, Anita Anand, Gordon Brown and many other writers, historians and performers. The programme’s central theme, “Changing Your Mind,” spans mental illness, reading, consciousness and cultural collaboration, while events at Greyfriars Kirk pair Scottish writers with international musicians and performers. The festival’s wide-ranging programme is presented as deliberately uncategorisable, with personal recommendations including Colson Whitehead, Ben Lerner and Anne Patchett. Anil Seth’s event is noted as cancelled.

The novel follows time‑travelling librarian Shona McMonagle as she lands in Enlightenment‑era Edinburgh and interacts with historical figures including Walter Scott and Robert Burns. Comedic misunderstandings between her modern sensibilities and 18th‑century society are enhanced by detailed historical settings, while her influence is humorously woven into literary history. The plot centres on rescuing Marcia Blaine from execution to preserve the future of her school. The reviewer praises the book as Olga Wojtas’s sharpest and funniest work to date.