Sally Magnusson, Horace and The Poet

Yesterday I attended the 2013 Wigton Book Festival and I had an excellent time.  The weather was warm and sunny and there were a great many events and readings taking place across the pleasant little town of Wigton.   This was not the first time I had been, in fact last year I attended and posted here about it.  This time my prime reason for attending was once more Sally Magnusson and her creation Horace the Haggis who was out and about promoting his new book for the kiddies.

My middle son, The Poet, was literally vibrating with excitement to get into the large tent where the reading was to take place and he enjoyed it greatly.  He even got his copy, being held up proudly above, signed by the authoress who remembered him from the previous year.   My eldest went to a talk being held by Robert Harris who while discussing his new book is also the author of Talisman a board game from the 1980’s by Games Workshop which was a firm favourite of mine.  If Mr Harris was distracted by being asked about it rather than his new work he seemed delighted to discuss the game!  The smallest of the wee chaps went to a talk on Dinosaurs where he put forth his theories on evolution and asked if birds would turn back into T-Rex’s any time soon.  A picnic lunch was spread and the drive home was very nice too with the choice of music being two albums by The Alan Parson’s Project.

Books from the Book Festival

I trawled the book shops in the town and managed to find three gems among the literally thousands of volumes in each and every shop.  You can see these above.  There is also a flyer for the special exhibit for ‘Wigton 2113’ which sadly I could not get into as it was booked out…sci-fi denied!

Fantasy Wargaming edited by Bruce Galloway is an excellent find as books about wargaming, what I do for a living mainly, are thin on the ground.  No training manual for my profession no.   I have several of these titles about different periods and genres and they are all very useful.  This one pre-dates the whole modern fantasy wargaming movement but it does give solid grounding in what is to be expected.  I look forward to reading it.  The other two are a pulp science fiction art and story  book made for children in the 1980’s in a series which if you can believe I own the others but have never seen this one missing volume EVER before.  Awesome!  Lastly a heavy weight academic text on Three Tomorrows examining tropes in sci-fi from a British, American and Soviet perspective.  Yes, Soviet.  Its not new but it dates from the same period as Terminator and Blade Runner.

If you can get to Wigton for next year’s festival then do so as it is an excellent day out.

GBS