Celebrating The Book of Iona

The Book of Iona is a stunning literary tribute to a place that has for centuries inspired Scotland’s novelists, poets, saints and sinners.

Edited by celebrated poet and biographer Robert Crawford, The Book of Iona pulls together a treasure trove of historical material – from poems attributed to St Columba to amusing accounts of their visits to the island by Samuel Johnson, James Boswell, and John Keats. Woven into this rich fabric are many new specially commissioned Iona stories and poems, from writers including Meg Bateman, Jennie Erdal, Meaghan Delahunt, Candia McWilliam, Ruth Thomas and Vicky MacKenzie.

In The Book of Iona, as on Iona itself, the sacred and the secular rub shoulders. Here is where a medieval Gaelic-speaking monk encounters Seamus Heaney, and where Robert Louis Stevenson sails past Queen Victoria. Full of surprises, this is an anthology that will delight every lover of Iona and all lovers of literature.

We’re thrilled to welcome Robert Crawford, as well as fellow contributors Jennie Erdal and Vicky MacKenzie for an evening of readings and stories.