The Outrun: Amy Liptrot
11am, Saturday 5 November
After more than a decade in London, aged thirty, unable to control her drinking, Amy Liptrot returns to the Orkney sheep farm where she grew up. There she begins her recovery from addiction. The Outrun is a beautiful, inspiring book about living on the edge, about the pull between island and city, and the ability of the sea, the land, the wind and the moon to restore life and renew hope.
Amy Liptrot has written for various magazines, journals, blogs and a regular column for Caught by the River. As well as writing for Orkney Today, and editing the Edinburgh Student newspaper, she has worked as an artist’s model, a trampolinist and in a shellfish factory. This is her first book.
**Breakfast included with this event**
Love of Country: A Hebridean Journey – Madeleine Bunting
9.30am, Saturday 5 November
A journey delving deep into Hebridean history and culture that tells of how these Islands on the fringes of Britain helped shape our nation, and how the nation imposed its will on the Islands. It’s a riveting story of artists, writers, dreamers, explorers, philanthropists and developers. And also of community, resistance and rich Gaelic traditions, inextricably linked to an understanding of the landscape.
Madeleine Bunting is a former Guardian journalist. She read History at Cambridge and politics at Harvard. This is her fourth book, The Plot: A Biography of an English Acre won the Portico Prize. She lives in London.
**Breakfast included as part of this event**
Deep Talk into the Night: Julie Brook in conversation with Philip Hoare
9.15pm, Friday 4 NovemberJulie Brook makes large-scale sculptural work outside using different materials, photography and film as part of the working process. She studied art at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford (1980-83) and has lived and worked in remote landscapes in Scotland: Hoy, Orkney (1989); the west coast of Jura (1990-94) and on the uninhabited island of Mingulay, Outer Hebrides (1996-2011). Recently she has been working in the Libyan desert (2008-09) travelling with Tuareg guides; Syria (2010); NW Namibia (2011-14) travelling with Himba-Herero guides.
Leviathan or, the whale: Philip Hoare
8pm, Friday 4 November
This personal, historical and biographical journey won the 2009 Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction. More than the story of the whale, more than an investigation into dark, shadowy creatures in the depths, it is also the story of his and our own obsessions. Philip Hoare is the author of five other works of non-fiction: His latest book, The Sea Inside, was published 2014. He is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Southampton, and Leverhulme Artist-in-residence at The Marine Institute, Plymouth University, which awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2011.
North Atlantic Cabaret #2
6.15pm – 10pm, Friday 4 November
This is a one-ticket event. An evening in the company of Philip Hoare, who is an internationally renowned, award-winning writer and commentator particularly on the whale in history, culture and the imagination. It begins with the film he directed for the BBC The Hunt for Moby Dick, followed by an illustrated lecture on his prize winning book LEVIATHAN, or the Whale and concluding with a conversation with acclaimed artist Julie Brook.
Raptor: James Macdonald Lockhart
5pm, Friday 4 November
A journey in pursuit of the fifteen birds of prey species that nest and breed in the British Isles: from wind-scoured Orkney and the Outer Hebrides, to Dorset and Devon. Raptor is a poetic, insightful and sensitive history of shifting landscapes and habitats, and man’s often turbulent interactions with the natural world.
James Macdonald Lockhart’s notional ‘guide’ is the Isle of Harris-born early ornithologist, author and inspiration William MacGillivray. The event will be chaired by naturalist, writer and illustrator John Love.
The Hunt for Moby-Dick, 2009, BBC Arena Film (84 mins)
6.15, Friday 4 November
Travelling in the footsteps of Ishmael, the narrator of Moby Dick, Philip Hoare visits the whaling ports of New England searching for the truth behind the story and draws an eerie parallel between Captain Ahab’s crazed pursuit of the great white whale and today’s war on terror. He enters a world haunted by a bloody and violent past, and, in the three mile-deep waters of the Atlantic, has his own encounter with the legendary sperm whale.
Man of Aran: Robert Flaherty 1934 76m
3pm, Friday 4 November
Filmed on the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland Man of Aran depicts life in pre-modern conditions, fishing off high cliffs, growing potatoes where there is little soil, and hunting for basking sharks. It is Robert Flaherty‘s re-creation of culture on the edges of modern society, even though much of it had been left behind by the 1930s. It is impressive for its drama, its spectacular cinematography of landscape and seascape, and its concise editing.
North Atlantic, 2012 Bernardo Nascimento (15m)
2.15pm, Friday 4 November
Based on a true story, North Atlantic tells the story of an isolated air traffic controller who receives a mayday call one night: a lone pilot is lost over the Atlantic Ocean with no chance or reaching land. This will be his last conversation.
To Rona on a Whaler, 1904 (Silent, 12m)
2pm, Friday 4 November
Following a whaling boat and crew to the remote island of Rona and the work at a whaling station at Buanavoneadar on Harris.