The Borders Book Festival at 20
The Borders Book Festival celebrates 20 years of entertaining, challenging and amusing The Borders this year. Thousands will flock to Harmony Gardens in Melrose, hopefully under flaming June skies. I have attended the festival a few times now and love the informal atmosphere and the energy created by the authors and their wrapt audiences. This years event will run over four days, from Thursday 15 - Sunday 18 June. Highlights include political heavyweights Gordon Brown, Andy Burnham and John Curtice. Sporting stars such as Will Carling, Martin O’Neill, Archie McPherson and Pat Nevin will also be in attendance and of course novelists are well represented with Paterson Joseph, Val McDermid and Robert Harris among the speakers. In short, it’s a very starry line up and one of the premier events in The Borders calendar. But how did it start, who puts it together and how did they build something like this from nothing? Time to unpick it’s 20 year history…
The story begins with award winning Borders author and historian Alistair Moffat. Alistair’s books have long been favourites of mine with his accessible view on history and his willingness to debunk historically held sacred cows appealing very much to me. In particular, I believe his 2019 book “To the Island of Tides” to be truly outstanding, telling the fascinating story of St. Cuthbert and Lindisfarne but also a touching and intimate portrait of grief and reflections on mortality. I was therefore delighted when he kindly agreed to answer some questions I wanted to put to him for this blog - a classic example of “if ye dinny ask, ye dinny get”!
Alistair organised the first Festival in Melrose using the Wynd Theatre, and it was a sell out. The venue itself was tiny, as intimate and dinky a provincial theatre as your likely to see anywhere. Four authors were secured to speak - Alan Massey, Norman Davies, Willie Dalyrmple and Lord Melvyn Bragg. As an aside, anyone who, like me, is devoted to Melvyn Bragg’s ‘In Our Time’ radio show must look back at that 2004 line up and think what a discussion those four could have had! So the festival was up and running - authors were all paid a miserable fee, but fed, watered and looked after in as lavish a way as possible. This is a theme that resonates to this day - the organisers want both the public and authors to have a great time. They are showcasing The Borders to the world. The following years saw the festival grow with the venue changing first to the Melrose Corn Exchange then to the Melrose Festival Ball Marquee and spreading over a couple of days. This increased capacity of the vast marquee required even bigger names and in the second year one was provided - Sir Michael Palin, globe trotting python and now firmly sitting in National Treasure territory. An amusing tale about this was that despite the star booking, ticket sales were sluggish. Mr Moffat, ever the promoter, did his market research and it turns out a lot of Borders folk thought it was a wind up. “Michael Palin in a tent at the Battery field? Aye, awright then”. Thankfully the booking was confirmed as bona fide and a huge hit. Incidentally, Sir Michael has since returned to the festival and on his last visit spent over an hour walking the 50 metres from the marquee back to the green room, speaking to the festival goers and ensuring the public had a great memory of meeting the comedy legend. This informality and openness seems key to the Festivals success, and Alistair Moffat was keen to put this across when we spoke. After a few years in the huge marquee the festival finally found its natural and thus far lasting home - Harmony Gardens, in the centre of Melrose and looked after by the National Trust. The gardens are beautiful in June and the festival has the space it needs for three big marquees. It has now spread across the road into the orchard, with food stalls, beer tent (it’s The Borders - we aye hae a beer tent) and kid’s entertainment. We didn’t take the kids last year, on account of wanting to be able to relax (!), but we came away knowing that we would have plenty to entertain them this year. Definitely a family friendly event.
Alistair Moffat and Paula Ogilvie, launching the 2023 Festival
One of the key reasons for the early and ongoing success of the event was the involvement of Paula Ogilvie. A weel kent face in the region, her fellow Creative Director Mr Moffat describes her as Creative, Hard Working and organised - the event management holy trinity! The team has grown over the years as the festival has, but these two remain crucial in their roles.
The Festival added it’s own literary prize in 2010 with the creation of The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. Scott practically invented the historical novel and being (arguably) the most famous Borderer who has ever lived was a natural choice for naming this award. The prize is £25,000 which is, to use Alistair Moffat’s phrase, ‘chunky’ - he felt it had to be significant to give it the cache it needed. It’s one of the biggest prizes in the UK and is generously supported by the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch - descendants of Sir Walter. Past winners include Sebastian Barry, Ben Myers, Robert Harris and the late, Great Dame Hilary Mantell, inaugural winner with the stupendous ‘Wolf Hall’. The shortlist for 2023 hasn’t been released yet but don’t be surprised to see actor turned author Paterson Joseph pick up the prize, his debut novel is astonishingly good.
From the early days the festival has aimed to be based in the Borders but not wholly about The Borders. The idea is that for a handful of days a year the cultural gaze of the country is shone on Melrose. Similarly to how during August Edinburgh takes the gaze away from London for a month. And it feels that way - sitting last year listening to Andrew Marr on UK Politics as well as Ukraine and Russia, you looked round and saw fellow speaker Clive Myrie listening intently at the back of the tent ahead of his own session. No green room champers for the Mastermind host, recently returned from Kyiv, he wanted to hear the ideas and debate. I love this energy and exchange of ideas that great book festivals bring, and Borders has it in spades.
I hope these few words have whetted your appetite, the festival came back strongly post Covid in 2022 but there was still a slight nervousness a year ago after the prior two years of stop start events. Here’s hoping that in 2023 the festival is a hit again and sell out signs are up for most sessions. I’m incredibly indebted to Alistair Moffat for giving his time to an unknown blogger and allowing me generous insights into the festival. A phone call which will live long in my memory. I also want to thank Hilary from the team for allowing me to use the images in the blog - all of which are of course copyright of Borders Book Festival.
So, what are you waiting for? Programme is available now and tickets are already selling fast. Follow the link and let me know in comments what you are going to see 🙂
The Borders Book Festival
Absolutely Fabulous!
