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Andrew Meehan will be with us to talk about his debut novel, Best Friends. Andrew has visited Islay just once before, in the summer of 1995, when he worked on a BBC Scotland TV show called Big Country. He tells us, “My job as a researcher was to find well known people who enjoyed certain parts of Scottish culture. In this episode, we featured the artist Ralph Steadman’s love of Islay whisky, and we received great hospitality in Bowmore. A memorable weekend that I don’t remember much about!”

Best Friends is a novel about love in later life, and Andrew says it “came from a fear and fascination with the potential loneliness that might come with growing old,” a subject which will strike a chord with many readers. “In their 70s, June and Ray are by no means at the end of life, but they are on the far side of hope, living without high expectations. Their greatest fear is loneliness. And their greatest fear has now come to pass. All the way through Best Friends, I tried to avoid using the very word lonely. Perhaps this is because one of the things we do to stave off loneliness is to pretend we’re not lonely. Best Friends is a book about not being on your own.”

Regarding other events during this year’s Festival, Andrew is looking forward to catching up with another esteemed Scottish literary name: “I recently had the pleasure of being interviewed by Len Pennie on BBC Radio Scotland, and I’d be very keen to see her read her work.” We’re looking forward to that too, Andrew!

Andrew’s event is at Little Charlotte’s, Port Ellen, on Friday 29th August at 2pm. Tickets are Pay What You Can – suggested £7. 

Mollie Hughes is a world record-breaking sports adventurer, mountaineer, polar explorer and international motivational speaker. In 2017 Mollie broke the world record for becoming the youngest woman to climb both sides of Mount Everest and in 2020 became the youngest woman to ski solo to the South Pole. In December 2020 she was the first woman to become president of Scouts Scotland.

You can find out more about Mollie at her website.

Mollie’s latest book is Blue Scotland. She will take part in our exciting schools programming, as well as leading a wild swimming event on Saturday morning and participating in a Welcoming Nature panel event on Saturday afternoon. At the time of writing, a few tickets are still available for both events via Ticketsource.

In a career spanning over forty-five years, Tracey has worked with children, young adults and older people in Glasgow, the Scottish Borders, Bradford and the Southern Hebrides, first training as a social worker in 1981. Her first daughter, Cora, died in a tragic accident in 1987 when she was fourteen months old. 

The Light Shining in Our Hearts was first written in 1991 for Cora’s two siblings. It gently depicts the presence of a deceased child in a family’s life, encouraging children to remember and honour the loss of a child during the grieving process, and replacing the negative thoughts and feelings associated with death and grief with a beautiful hope and a focus on magical remembrance.

Since the death of Cora, a large part of Tracey’s life has been to encourage discussions about death, loss, and separation. She supported bereaved parents in Glasgow in the 1990s as a member of the peer support group The Compassionate Friends. It was through this work that she came to realise no one is ever truly alone in their bereavement. Ever since, she has made it her mission to support others to find a path of light through the darkness – even in the depths of grief.

Tracey’s will be speaking about her book The Light Shining in Our Hearts, in conversation with Victoria Bennett, on Sunday morning at Bruichladdich Hall.

David Caldwell was brought up in Ayrshire and studied archaeology and Scottish history at Edinburgh University. He was employed from 1973 to 2012 by the National Museums of Scotland in a curatorial role, latterly as Keeper of Archaeology and Keeper of Scotland & Europe. In the 1990s he directed excavations at Finlaggan.

He has published widely on Scottish history and archaeology and has also served as President of the Post-Medieval Archaeology Society, President of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, Chair of Fife Cultural Trust and as a member of the board of the National Trust for Scotland.

David told us, “my book is a labour of love. I felt a very considerable responsibility to process all the data from my excavations at Finlaggan and produce from it an interesting and understandable account. It has taken a large part of my life, fitted in amongst many other commitments but I realised I was the only person in a position to do it.”

He went on, “Why does it matter? I believe that Finlaggan represents an important strand in our past which has not yet received the full recognition it deserves. It was the centre of the Lordship of the Isles, an alternative type of lordship to that in much of the rest of Europe but one which is the source of much of what we now regard as distinguishing us as Scottish.”

David also told us he’s very much looking forward to seeing the fruits of Ronnie Black’s labours in the Dewar Manuscripts.

David will be in conversation with Ronnie Black on Sunday morning 1st September at Bruichladdich hall.

Ronald Black was a lecturer in the Department of Celtic Studies, Edinburgh University, from 1979 to 2001. He is the author of The Campbells of the Ark (John Donald, 2017) and is now director of the Dewar Project.

Ronnie will host a joint event with David Caldwell, author of Islay: The Land of the Lordship and The Archaeology of Finlaggan, Islay (expected this year). Between them they will present two completely different ways of researching history, other than through documents: David’s through archaeology, mine through translation, presentation and analysis of the Gaelic historical stories collected by John Dewar in Islay, Jura and Colonsay in 1869–70.

Ronnie told us “my book (co-edited with Chris Dracup) is the first in a planned series of ten covering not only the whole of Argyll but also Arran, west Dunbartonshire, Perthshire and Lochaber. We describe Dewar’s stories as “the people’s history of the West Highlands, in their own language, from 1306 to 1752”. In fact, the Islay/Jura/Colonsay stories can better be described as covering the period 1586 (the massacre at Mulindry) to 1833 (the founding of Port Wemyss). That means that, in effect, the archaeology of Finlaggan and Dewar’s stories together provide an alternative seam of historical evidence running smoothly from the middle ages to the nineteenth century. I look forward to discussing this with David in the course of the presentation, and to finding points of contact between these two very different kinds of source.”

Ronnie is a native of Glasgow, and told us he has many fond memories of cycling, walking and camping around Argyll in the 1960s. He first visited Jura and Islay in 1964 and Colonsay in 2014.

John Dewar’s Islay, Jura and Colonsay is a unique format, the first of its kind. The stories are presented in Gaelic and English on facing pages, but with many black-and-white and colour illustrations showing pages of manuscript and sites featured in the stories, along with maps, comprehensive historical commentary, a chapter pulling together the evidence on the battles of Tràigh Ghruinneart and Beinn Bhigeir. There’s a full presentation of informants’ biographies, and a detailed gazetteer of the many place-names mentioned by Dewar.

Dewar’s stories are a bottom-up view of history, violent, no holds barred, full of heroes, heroines, villains and villainesses, concentrating firstly on the vicious MacDonald–MacLean feud in Islay, secondly on the vicious MacDonald–MacPhee feud in Colonsay, and thirdly on the takeover of Islay and Jura by the Campbells – genocidal at first, but more progressive thereafter, at least in Islay.

Ronald’s latest book is John Dewar’s Islay, Jura and Colonsay.

Ronnie will be in conversation with David Caldwell on Sunday morning 1st September at Bruichladdich hall – get your tickets today.

Today’s spotlight is Niall O’Gallagher. Niall is the author of three collections of poetry in Gaelic, Beatha Ùr (2013), Suain nan Trì Latha (2016) and Fo Bhlàth (2020) and of Fuaimean Gràidh / The Sounds of Love: Selected Poems (2023). In 2023 he was awarded the Bardic Crown at the National Mod. He lives on the Ayrshire coast with his wife and their two children.

Niall told us “I’ve been to Islay once before, years ago, where I got the chance to read from my translations of Gaelic poetry. The island is beautiful and I’m delighted to have been invited back. I’m looking forward to speaking Gaelic with people in Islay. I speak Irish too and the Islay dialect seems to me to be like a bridge, or even a stepping-stone between the two.”

When asked about his book, Niall told us “Fuaimean Gràidh / The Sounds of Love brings together poems from my first three collections with English translations for the first time. Many of them are love poems of different kinds and most of them rhyme. I’m interested in bringing together forms from Classical Gaelic poetry with European structures like the sonnet. I’ve also written a lot about the city of Glasgow. The translations are by other poets, mostly Peter Mackay and Deborah Moffatt.”

And as for other events? “I’ve just finished reading Andrew O’Hagan’s novel Caledonian Road so I hope my boat gets in on time to go to the event!” We’ll see you there, Niall!

You can find out more about Niall at his website.

Niall’s latest book is The Sounds of Love / Fuaimean Gràidh.

Niall will be in conversation with Taylor Strickland at a special Gaelic event on Saturday afternoon at the Gaelic College, which will be chaired by Iseabail Mactaggart.