Latest news with #BoswellBookFestival
Daily Record
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Record
Boswell Book Festival draws in the crowds with another successful year
Dumfries House hosted the Boswell Book Festival, the world's only festival dedicated to biography and memoir, at the weekend. Crowds flocked to the Boswell Book Festival as the world's only festival dedicated to biography and memoir was held at the weekend. Audiences were treated to a star-studded line up with the likes of Chloe Dalton, Helen Lederer, John Suchet and Wayne Sleep taking to the stage at Dumfries House near Cumnock. Sold-out events featured Rupert Everett in conversation with Fiona Armstrong about his book, The American No, and Pam Ayres - one of the UK's best-selling poets - with her book Doggedly Onward. A rare opportunity for tours of Auchinleck House, the family home of James Boswell, were also snapped up. Dom Joly took audiences on a tour of conspiracy theories around the globe including the funny and the quirky but also attempting to understand what makes people so drawn them. Ayrshire was at the heart of the festival - named after Auchinleck's James Boswell, the father of modern biography. Kilwinning author Andrew O'Hagan brought the house down in a riotous keynote that celebrated the dialect and humour of Scotland. Download the Ayrshire Live app today The Ayrshire Live app is available to download now. Get all the local news in your area – plus features, football news and the latest on the coronavirus crisis – at your fingertips 24/7. The free download features the latest breaking news and exclusive stories while you can customise your page with the sections that matter to you. The Ayrshire Live app is available to download now on iOS and Android. Rob Close and Gillian Hope gave an insight into the lives of soldiers from Ayrshire and Sanquhar on the front lines during World War 1 on the weekend that the 80th anniversary of VE Day was commemorated. The history of witchcraft and the persecution of 'witches' in Scotland was highlighted by Claire Mitchell and Zoe Venditozzi alongside their book, How to Kill a Witch: A Guide for the Patriarchy. Events for all ages were a plenty on the Saturday and Sunday with Alison Galbraith, Alan Dapré and Vivian French entertaining as part of the Boswell Children's Festival.
Scotsman
09-05-2025
- Scotsman
The Witches of Scotland are on the march with a new book and their fight for justice
With a public apology secured, Claire Mitchell KC & Zoe Venditozzi fight on for a pardon and are spreading the word with a podcast and tartan memorial Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Are you female, have one or more moles and are capable of expressing yourself? Perhaps you have a cat, are maybe single by design or circumstance, and given to bestowing well-meaning medical tips? Zoe Venditozzi and Claire Mitchell, Witches of Scotland campaigners, are taking their now book How To Kill A Witch: A Guide For The Patriarchy on the road. | John Devlin Then you might as well get yourself a pointy hat and broomstick because turn back the clock a few centuries and you'd find yourself accused and convicted of witchcraft and in a burning bucket of tar surrounded by a braying mob faster than you can say 'I only said they might want to get some ointment on that'. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Zoe Venditozzi and Claire Mitchell KC, authors of How to Killa Witch: A Guide For The Patriarchy and founders of The Witches of Scotland campaign. | John Devlin Claire Mitchell KC & Zoe Venditozzi know only too well the speed and ease with which thousands of innocent women - and a few men - were murdered in the witch hunts which raged across Scotland from the 16th to 18th centuries and they give it chapter and verse in their fascinating, fact-filled, funny, feminist and furious new book, How to Kill A Witch - A Guide for the Patriarchy, which they will be highlighting at Boswell Book Festival this week and other forthcoming events. Mitchell, a Scottish advocate specialising in appellate law, with a particular focus on constitutional issues, human rights, and sentencing, and Zoe Venditozzi, a writer and educator, were both spurred on by a sense of injustice to set up the Witches of Scotland campaign five years ago. Dedicated to seeking justice for the nearly 4,000 predominantly women, who were accused of witchcraft in Scotland between 1563 and 1736 - with an estimated 2,500 executed - the self-styled 'quarrelsome dames' have become podcasters, authors and now tartaneers in a bid to meet their campaign aims of a pardon, an apology and some form of memorial. In addition to bearing witness to the murdered women, they also want to highlight the inequalities that still exist from misogyny and violence to accusations of witchcraft in various parts of the world, and challenge damaging patriarchal norms to make sure that we learn from our past mistakes. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'Along with the campaign we have a companion podcast, Witches of Scotland which was initially supposed to be six episodes, but we're standing at 76 or so now,' says Mitchell, as she and Venditozzi tell me about the new book. It was standing in Edinburgh's Princes Street Gardens with its multiple statues of men and animals that inspiration for the campaign first struck Mitchell. 'I realised there were heehaw statues of named women and thought it was weird. As a lawyer who at that time had worked in the Appeal Court for more than 15 years I thought of the world through justice and miscarriages of justice. I thought not only are we not recording brilliant things women are doing but we're not recording a really dark time in Scotland's history where women were othered, persecuted and died in the most brutal and terrible miscarriage of justice, and it was on that point that I decided to do the campaign.' Teaming up with Venditozzi, who is passionate about uncovering and sharing the stories of those wrongfully accused during Scotland's witch trials, the pair set up The Witches of Scotland campaign which has three aims: an apology, a pardon and a memorial. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Zoe Venditozzi and Claire Mitchell KC of the Witches of Scotland who are campaigning for a pardon for the 4,000 mainly women accused of witchcraft three hundred years ago, and some kind of memorial. | John Devlin A state apology was issued by Nicola Sturgeon as First Minister on International Women's Day in 2022, and the campaign is still working on a pardon while the memorialisation has focused around a new tartan and the book. 'We dedicate the book to the women who were executed as witches and it tries to tell their story with some amazing written pieces from Zoe, the creative parts,' says Mitchell. 'I'm a writer,' says Venditozzi, 'so think in terms of that, but also we've created this amazing resource with the podcast and 76 episodes is pretty unwieldy so we thought it would be good to have a book too where we could distill the story. It's one place that explains where the witch trials came from, how they functioned, who was involved, explained by experts and with fictional pen portraits of the people involved so you think about the individuals too.' The witch trials are a dark topic, but Mitchell and Venditozzi imbue the book with humour at times too. It's stuffed with informative details, such as how long it takes to burn a body, why there is only one 'witch's' grave in Scotland, and the reason so many witches were called Janet (a fact that made me clutch my black cat for comfort) - the name being the witchcraft equivalent of Jane Doe, since proper records were never kept. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Venditozzi and Mitchell also speak to experts such as historians, forensic scientists and researchers and reference sources such as the Survey of Scottish Witchcraft database where the names of the accused are gathered. 'The witch trials are very serious obviously,' says Venditozzi, 'but we both have quite a dark sense of humour. I think doing this huge deep dive into it you have to have that. We're not historians, we're two middle aged women that have alighted on this as something that not only makes us angry about the past, but still angry because it's not sorted. 'We're maybe not still setting women on fire, but we're losing some of the gains we've made in the last half a century.' 'It's a call to action,' agrees Mitchell. To challenge misogyny and the norms where women are abused be it online or in person, and their hard won freedoms rolled back. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'It's for people to read and go 'well I don't want that to happen again and actually I can see parallels with now, so what can I do as a citizen, as a human, as an individual, to make sure that that doesn't happen again?' We still live in a patriarchy. There's still a problem with women getting to the top and unequal pay. There's still an unequal burden of caring responsibilities.' Now that the campaign has achieved an apology, what's the approach with securing a pardon? 'It's a collective pardon,' says Mitchell, given that the records are incomplete or non-existent. 'We can look at the two pardons that have already taken place. The first was in relation to men convicted of same sex sexual behaviour. People had to apply for it and you wouldn't have to be a top lawyer to work out that nobody's going to be applying for a pardon for women convicted of witchcraft because they can't. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'The next pardon was given to the miners pardoned en masse in relation to offences they were said to have committed during the Miners' Strike. So in the same way we are asking for a pardon for those convicted under The Witchcraft Act 1563-1736. They weren't guilty of the crime they were convicted of, witchcraft. They ought never to have been criminalised and what we got wrong is that women were in league with the devil, doing terrible things. Those people ought to have their name recorded properly in history as people who suffered a miscarriage of justice, not as witches.' Venditozzi is also keen to stress the ongoing impact of accusations of witchcraft and the legacy felt by entire families and descendants. Remember that in the 1600s the population of Scotland was only 900,000 so the chances are if you weren't accused or an accuser of the 4,000, you knew someone who was. By comparison the 1692 Salem witch trials saw 200 accused, 19 killed, and a hasty recognition that it was a big mistake and miscarriage of justice. Whereas in Scotland the trials were led from the top with King James VI publishing Daemonolgie, his own guide for the patriarchy, in 1597, which set the tone and influenced everyone from ordinary citizens to Shakespeare who was inspired to write Macbeth. Zoe Venditozzi and Claire Mitchell, KC, present the Witches of Scotland podcast, now running at 70+ episodes | John Devlin The pair stress the gendered nature of the witch hunts, given that 85% of those murdered were women. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'Anybody that argues there wasn't a misogynistic, anti-women agenda is mental and clearly a man. Only someone in possession of a penis would look at those figures and go 'it seems pretty fair to me'. I think it's absolutely an attack on women.' Moving onto the third aim of the campaign, a memorial, Mitchell and Venditozzi wrestled with the idea of a statue. 'A statue would take a lot more than the two of us, and a lot of money. We've seen what happened with the Elsie Inglis statue in Edinburgh and we've got zero interest in getting involved with some guy and his sculptural tools. Also where would it go? This happened all over Scotland. There's an amazing witch trials memorial in Norway which is a beautiful piece of art by Louise Bourgeois. What I wouldn't want is a lassie looking out sort of winsomely.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'Perhaps with her top slightly falling off the shoulders…' says Mitchell. 'A nice bosom…' says Venditozzi. 'Inexplicably too much detail in the bust…' agrees Mitchell and they laugh. John Devlin | John Devlin With the statue discussion stalled Mitchell was inspired by the opening of the V&A in Dundee in 2018 and its inaugural exhibition, Tartan. 'I saw all ethnicities and ages wearing tartans in different ways and talking about it, and thought how amazing would it be if we could get one made that embodies the stories of the women executed so we could wear it and remember our history. It's not geographically fixed and tartan is universal so people could tell the story all over the world.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Witches of Scotland made contact with Clare Campbell of Prickly Thistle Scotland, who came up with the red, black and white design. 'She said you couldn't have done it with a better piece of cloth because tartan is the story of struggle, resistance, community,' says Mitchell. A kickstarter to raise funds to make the tartan met its £5,000 target on day one, totalled £140,000 within a week and now there's a waiting list for the scarves and throws on the Witches of Scotland website. 'The Witches of Scotland tartan is here to stay,' says Mitchell. 'Zoe and I didn't choose the tartan life, the tartan life chose us! We're just trying to cope with our day jobs, podcast, book coming out and becoming accidental tartaneers.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The beauty of the tartan is that it's universal and encapsulates Scotland's past as well as future. 'People now will understand a wee bit more about Scotland's past and how that impacts on our present and future,' says Venditozzi. 'I grew up in Fife and was taught nothing in school about it, so I feel we're reaching people with an aspect of our own lost history.' Coming back to the present day the campaign looks at current inequalities and misogyny such as the epidemic of domestic violence and online hate towards women, and also looks forward in bid to make sure the same mistakes aren't repeated. 'Our campaign is saying when people are othered and blamed for things they could not possibly have done that is a terrible miscarriage of justice and we have to deal with it. It's for women to make their voice heard,' says Mitchell. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Venditozzi agrees: 'Whether it's racism or misogyny, othering, or feminist issues, call it out. Don't sit back. It's really important we say I'm not going to put up with that. If we go quietly then the people that are trying to take away our rights get what they want, which is to silence us. We need to stand up and speak out.' John Devlin | John Devlin 'If you like the ideas you see in the book, the podcast, the tartan, if you like what we're about,' says Mitchell, 'put your elbows out and make space in the world and talk to other women and try and make that difference. Become quarrelsome dames.' How to Kill A Witch is published by Monoray, hardback £20, on 15 May. Claire Mitchell KC & Zoe Venditozzi will appear at Boswell Book Festival on Sunday, 11 May, 5pm and Waterstones Edinburgh Princes Street on Saturday 17 May to talk about their new book How to Kill a Witch.
Daily Record
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Record
What's on in Ayrshire this weekend: VE Day events, book festival and more
Here are Ayrshire Live's top picks for fun, exciting and informative events taking place across the county this weekend. A host of fun-filled, exciting and informative events are taking place across Ayrshire this weekend. Dumfries House near Cumnock hosts the Boswell Book Festival which gets underway tonight, May 9. A star-studded line up includes headliners Andrew O'Hagan, Chloe Dalton, Dom Joly, Pam Ayres, Rupert Everett, Helen Lederer, John Suchet and Wayne Sleep who are all set to share their life stories. Tickets, from £5, are still available for most events but Pam Ayres and Rupert Everett have already sold out their slots. The Boswell Children's Festival has events for all ages with Alison Galbraith, Alan Dapré and Vivian French ready to entertain on Saturday and Sunday. Visit the Boswell Book Festival website for full details. VE Day commemorations continue into the weekend and South Ayrshire 's Field of Heroes will remain on display until Saturday. The stunning visual and audio installation in Ayr 's Wellington Square features silhouettes of soldiers in memory of the men and women who lost their lives during World War 2. Each silhouette is linked by QR code to a video and picture gallery which tells the life story of one of those people. Alloway Village Hall is also hosting a celebration event with a night of music, dancing and fun as they commemorate the anniversary. Get ready to jump, jive, swing and sing along to live performances of all your favourite tunes from the 1940s from 6.30pm on Saturday night. Tickets for VE Day 80th Anniversary Celebration - Jump, Jive, Swing, and Sing are available online. Comedian Billy Kirkwood takes to the stage in Kilmarnock on Saturday night with his show Hame. Billed as the first ever all Ayrshire stand up line up, fellow Ayrshire originals Kyle Samuel and Kat Powell are the supporting acts at CentreStage. Tickets for Hame are available online. Largs ' dogs days out takes place on Sunday from 10am on Largs Promenade which is packed with fun activities, exciting demonstrations and plenty of opportunities to meet other dog lovers as the town celebrates four-legged friends. The Millport 10 Miler Fun Run also takes place on Sunday at 12pm as Great Cumbrae aims to raise funds for Parkinson's and Alzheimer's charities. Entrants can run, jog or walk the 10 miles round the island taking in stunning views across the Firth of Clyde. Full details are available on the event's Facebook page. The weekly markets also return at Gallowgate Square in Largs on Saturday and at Ayr Racecourse on Sunday, both from 10am to 4pm and offering a range of goods from local businesses and traders and those further afield.
Daily Record
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Record
Boswell Book Festival returns this weekend
A range of events are being hosted at Dumfries House from Friday to Saturday. The Boswell Book Festival opens the doors to Dumfries House this Friday, May 9, with a stellar line-up of celebrities and some of the best biographers around. From bagpipes (Richard McLauchlan) to Buddism (Gelong Thubten) and Beethoven (John Suchet) as well as ballet (Wayne Sleep) there will also be laughs a-plenty with Pam Ayres, Helen Lederer and Dom Jolly. As ever the festival brings writers who give insight to matters that matter - Nick Wallis on the Post Office scandal, John Sweeney on the death of the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and tech expert Dr Tom Chatfield on how technology and AI will affect our future. In a world where so much unrest unfolds on an almost daily basis, previous wars are on the agenda – World War 1 with local stories from the Sanquhar Boys and Boswell's Galloping Farmers; two sides of World War 2 - A War of Empire: Japan and Hitler's People and the Korean War discussed with Robert Lyman's Korea:War Without End. Families are welcome with a full programme of events for children of all ages, including the Outdoor Classroom set in the glorious gardens of Dumfries House. Festival Director, Caroline Knox, said: 'The months of planning, phoning and scheduling all our events are all worthwhile when we see the queues building for the various events. 'Our audiences are always keen to participate and we are looking forward to lively interaction and interesting questions. 'Fingers crossed that the sun shines on our beautiful venue where we welcome so many great writers each year.' Inspired by Ayrshire writer James Boswell, the Boswell Book Festival is the world's only festival dedicated to memoir and biography. For further details and to book tickets, visit:
Scottish Sun
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scottish Sun
Star of iconic Channel 4 show bringing live conspiracy theory tour to Scotland
THE funnyman, 60, enjoyed a seriously strange sightseeing trip as he learned about the likes of flat-earthers and UFO hunters. DOM Joly hopes Scots can help him tackle tin foil hatters on his bonkers book tour – after travelling the world to learn all sorts of conspiracies. The comedian, best known for Trigger Happy TV, set out on a global journey to pen a unique guide into some of the most weird and wonderful theories. 4 Dom Joly travelled the world learning about conspiracies. Credit: PA 4 Some believe that Finland isn't a real country. Credit: Getty 4 He's coming to Scotland for Boswell Book Festival. Credit: Supplied By meeting the folk behind the unusual beliefs, the funnyman, 60, enjoyed a seriously strange sightseeing trip as he learned about the likes of flat-earthers and UFO hunters. And he's heading for Boswell Book Festival next month and looks forward to meeting believers and non-believers alike when he talks about The Conspiracy Tourist: Travels Through a Strange World. Dom said: 'I'm very happy to talk to people. But it's kind of one of the problems with conspiracy theories. 'If someone comes along they're always focused on a single issue. So they're obsessed with chemtrails and they have literally spent 15 years just studying this thing. 'You can't possibly argue and when you get the real single-issue conspiracy theorists, they're like religious zealots. I can say 'I don't agree with you, but I can't argue with you' and that's not very good for either side. 'There's also a geographical element to it. People in Scotland still talk to each other. Whereas a lot of conspiracists in America live almost entirely remote existences online so no one tells you you're talking s**e.' Amongst Dom's favourite conspiracy theories is the belief that Finland isn't a real country. A Reddit user once shared a joke about the small nation and it was quickly picked up by some impressionable people. He said: 'The conspiracy started off as a joke on Reddit and everyone knew it was a joke. But 20 per cent of people took it seriously and the conspiracy is that in 1917 Russia and Japan invented a country called Finland and that it's actually just sea so that they could have the fishing rights. 'So they claim when I fly to Finland I'm landing in a remote part of either Sweden or Russia and that all four million inhabitants of Finland are crisis actors like a massive Truman Show. 'I found the bloke who started it and he said he was told that Finland didn't exist because Russia and Japan conspired to invent the country so that they could have all the fish, which was then transported to Japan for sushi. Dom Joly creates hilarious comedy skit to highlight small business struggles 'Clearly that's BS ecause I just flew there, right? I couldn't 100 per cent prove to you now that Finland exists. I could probably prove 99 per cent that it does and it's that one per cent where all conspiracy theories live.' He's also heard how Paul McCartney was cloned in 1966; how Avril Lavigne stopped performing 10 years ago and was replaced by a woman called Melissa; and that Prince Philip killed Diana by going to the tunnel in Paris and putting in an industrial laser to blind the car driver. But Dom reckons conspiracy theories can best be broken down into three big causes — the assassination of JFK, 9/11 and Coronavirus. He also thinks the advent of YouTube and social media has emboldened dangerous characters who are profiting from things they don't even believe in. 4 Dom Joly in the iconic Trigger Happy TV hidden camera and prank show Credit: CHANNEL 4 The comic said: 'I can pinpoint the exact moment when they went from being harmless and fun to more dangerous and it was when Kellyanne Conway, who was Donald Trump's spokeswoman in 2016, used the term 'alternative facts'. 'And the moment you have alternative facts, frankly we're f***ed. During lockdown I was stuck in my room and spending too much time online and I noticed the rise in conspiracies. 'Conspiracies tend to happen a lot when everything's in turmoil and the economy's bad and people get troubled, and I started to talk to these people a lot or argue with them 'And I just couldn't work out whether they were genuinely believing this stuff or were just doing it for clicks. I don't think many were harming anyone, except for that erosion of truth. But it's the grifters that I really have a problem with. 'The people like Alex Jones who literally are making money by claiming the kids killed in school shootings are actors, then the parents get hassled online and they have to move house and stuff. BOSWELL BOOK FESTIVAL Main festival events will be live at Dumfries House. Tickets range from £5 to £15. Events in the main three venues will also be live-streamed. Online tickets are £5 per event or £40 for a Rover Pass giving access to all online events. You will receive the links needed to access online events via the e-ticket that will be emailed to you. Tickets also available over the phone by calling 0333 0035 077. Lines are open Mon - Sat, 09:00 - 18:00 until Friday 9 May. However, there are some conspiracy theories that even Dom was swayed by. He explained: 'I'm not sure UFOs are a conspiracy. I just think we'd so be arrogant to think that in all the universe we're the only people. 'And there have been more and more verified sightings of weird things in the sky. But UFO means unidentified flying object and it doesn't necessarily mean aliens. 'So I'm in two minds about that. I think there is some sort of phenomenon that maybe we're not aware of, but it seems very odd because all they seem to do — if they do exist — is land in Alabama and probe toothless rednecks. Why not just go to the White House?' He added: 'Weirdly, as much as I had a massive problem with the anti-vax people because I think they did a lot of damage to vulnerable people by frightening them, I have questions about the idea that Covid started as a bat in a wet market in Wuhan, when weirdly the largest coronavirus research facility in China is like half a mile from that market. 'It seems quite a coincidence and I think it's not beyond the realms of possibility that it was a lab leak, and that the Chinese government might try and shut that down. 'But that's an accident. Then it gets turned into this massive conspiracy that it's being used as a bio-weapon and that it's not affecting Jewish people or Chinese people, which was one of the conspiracies, and that vaccines are being used by Bill Gates to put a microchip in your brain. So all these things maybe start with a kernel of something and then turn into insane theories.' And for anyone coming to see Dom at the book festival, he urges folk to show some common sense. He joked: 'In the old days you'd have some guy raving in the village square about how the world's ending or whatever. Now they can all meet up and that gives them power.' Dom Joly is appearing at Boswell Book Festival on May 10, tickets can be booked
