Peebles Life details our programme for the 2014 Traquair Festival.

Beyond Borders’ fifth International Festival of Literature & Thought, at Traquair House on August 23-24, has launched its 2014 programme.

“Each summer, Beyond Borders makes the Scottish Borders a gathering place for world cultures to meet, talk and exchange ideas, exploring the most pressing issues of our time,” explains Mark Muller Stuart, director of the Edinburgh-based NGO Beyond Borders Scotland, and its annual Traquair festival formerly called Books, Borders & Bikes.

“This year’s lineup of debates, books, art and films, as we celebrate our fifth freethinking festival, explores themes of secrecy, Ukraine, Syria, Iran, Azerbaijan, Catholicism, the Commonwealth, Scotland’s independence referendum, and more. Our weekend of talks, walks and bike rides, in the beautiful surroundings of Traquair’s House and Grounds, gives a platform to the people making the news stories, in this historic year when Scotland steps onto the world stage.”

A few faces of the Beyond Borders Festival 2009-2014

On espionage, The Guardian’s Luke Harding reveals the covert life of the NSA whistleblower who exposed the US and UK governments’ culture of mass surveillance, Edward Snowden, from his book The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man. Disclosing more secrecy, the BBC Today programme’s Jim Naughtie examines whether it’s MPs or spooks who really run Britain, discussing his Westminster spy thriller, The Madness of July.

British-Iranian reporter Ramita Navai, of Channel 4’s Unreported World, shines a light on Tehran’s hidden life under one of the world’s most repressive regimes, from her book City of Lies. War photographer Paul Conroy for once focuses his lens on home, sharing his British Red Cross exhibition, Seeking Sanctuary, on Syrian refugees living in the UK, in one of the festival’s new lunchtime Tête-à-Tête sessions. Investigative journalist John Cornwell lifts the veil on Catholicism, from his expose The Dark Box: A Secret History of Confession.

In Traquair’s chapel, BBC Radio’s Geoffrey Baskerville interviews two generations of Traquair Lady Lairds, Flora and Catherine Maxwell Stuart, about how their family brought Scotland’s oldest inhabited house back to public life. Discover too the life story of US-UK playwright Bonnie Greer, as she gives her take on America’s First Family, the Obamas.

Just a month before September’s referendum, it’s time to decide in Beyond Borders’ Independence Debate: BBC Radio 4’s voice of the vote Jim Naughtie grills Yes and No camp insiders. The Independent’s Steve Richards, one of Britain’s most influential political commentators, casts a satirical eye on the state of the Union, performing his humorous show from the Edinburgh Fringe.

Examining Scotland’s role in the world, Commonwealth Secretary General Kamalesh Sharma reflects on the visit of 70 countries to the Glasgow Games, as The Sunday Times’ Magnus Linklater asks him and writer Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: ‘What’s the point of the Commonwealth?’

Then travel beyond borders, with dispatches from the Ukrainian barricades and Azerbaijan’s dissident blogger Emin Milli, a political prisoner freed with help from President Barack Obama, and journey to Chile with Colombian philosopher Dr. Oscar Guardiola-Rivera, guided by his book on President Salvador Allende, Story of a Death Foretold.

Dr. Guardiola-Rivera summed up the Beyond Borders festival, before he too returns for the fifth time: “What you have is brilliant minds, important, new ideas, emerging out of these encounters. Here are conflicting parties, from different parts of the world, gathered together, in order to try and solve their differences.”

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