BLOODY Scotland may well be a phrase that will be increasingly bandied around No 10 Downing Street over the next couple of years, but it’s also the name of this weekend’s inaugural festival of Scottish crime writing.
Taking place in Stirling, the festival is bulging with big names such as William McIlvanney, Ian Rankin, Christopher Brookmyre, Val McDermid and Denise Mina, but also gives plenty of cell space to writers including Gary Moffat, Craig Robertson and, sometimes seen in these pages, Doug Johnstone – a trio who are being labelled as the new bad boys on the block. From Victorian detectives to cutting-edge forensic techniques, no stones are left unturned as Bloody Scotland tries to get to the chibbed heart of the Tartan Noir genre.
On a gentler note, the third Lammermuir Music Festival has been tuning up for its opening weekend. Running until next Sunday, the festival is dedicated to producing classical music concerts in perhaps unexpected East Lothian venues. Belhaven Fruit Farm is the setting for this evening’s guitar gig with Simon Thacker, Chris Day and Camerata Ritmata picking their way through pieces such as Steve Reich’s Electric Counterpoint.
More traditional is this afternoon’s concert featuring the highly promising guitarist Sean Shibe, who joins forces with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in Dunbar Parish Church to perform pieces by Ravel, Rodrigo and Mozart. Just outwith this column’s remit, but worth mentioning, is Monday’s light and sound show at Tantallon Castle. Battles, witchcraft and 21st-century technology are promised.
This is the last weekend before Jupiter Artland closes for the season so it seems a good time to visit the Bonnington House sculpture park. Among the new-this-season works is Anya Gallaccio’s intriguing amethyst folly, The Light Pours Out of Me. It joins existing works such as Laura Ford’s haunting, faceless Weeping Girls and Anish Kapoor’s worrying Suck, in which a hole in the ground disappears into unseeable depths.