THE line-up has been announced for the Beyond Borders International Festival, which is returns to Innerleithen next month.

Former CIA operative Valerie Plame, historian William Dalrymple and authors Magnus Linklater, Richard Holloway and Stuart Kelly will be among the headliners at Traquair House on August 25 and 26.

And Scotland’s bestselling female music artist Barbara Dickson will also be on hand to perform.

The festival will feature a host of local and international artists, writers, journalists, politicians, and diplomats for a weekend of panel debates and discussions, spoken word, music, exhibitions, film, walks, and bike rides.

The Main Tent Programme features sessions with the UN Special Envoys to Yemen and Somalia; and head of office for the UN Special Envoy for Syria, Stephanie Koury – exploring their work making peace in the world’s most volatile conflicts, with veteran BBC foreign correspondents Allan Little and Razia Iqbal interrogating headline speakers.

Meanwhile The New York Times’ photo exhibition Hard Truths exposes the gripping reality of social and political upheavals from the ISIS-ravaged streets of Mosul and Iraq, to the vigilante-style war on drugs in Rodrigo Duterte’s Philippines.

The Walled Garden will host an arts and music programme, with music, spoken word, exhibitions, sustainable produce and workshops.

Cycle rides with authors Peter Walker, Will Manners, and Kate Rawles, and foraging walks will also take place around the grounds.

Barbara Dickson will perform an enchanting series of songs from Scotland and beyond on the Saturday.

And the festival will feature Lisa Kristine’s pioneering new exhibition Bound to Freedom, a call to action and a brutal exposé of modern slavery.

Renowned composer Nigel Osborne will be joined by Syrian, Ossetian and Georgian musicians, and followed by San Ghanny, music for Palestine on Saturday and SOWhErTO Africa on Sunday.

Other highlights include a talk by critically acclaimed author Maya Jasanoff, while Columbian lawyer and activist Oscar Guardiola-Rivera will discuss peacebuilding in Northern Ireland.

And on the centenary of Muriel Spark’s birth, her friend Alan Taylor will be interviewed by veteran BBC journalist Geoffrey Baskerville.

Meanwhile Yemeni photographer Thana Faroq will offer a workshop on the power of visual storytelling, with human rights activist and actor Pinar Aksu leading one the following afternoon entitled ‘the theatre of the oppressed.’

Source: https://www.peeblesshirenews.com/news/16371038.innerleithen-gearing-up-for-international-festival/