Lost World Read

The Lost World Read 2009 celebrated Arthur Conan Doyle’s 150th birthday and Charles Darwin’s bicentenary. It brought people across the UK together to read a classic adventure tale of a lost plateau, discovery and dinosaurs – The Lost World.

Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh and is known for having created the world’s most famous detective, Sherlock Holmes. The campaign was also part of Darwin 200 – celebrating the life and work of the man who discovered and opened up a new world with his theory of evolution by natural selection.

Edinburgh’s campaign was led by the Edinburgh UNESCO City of Literature Trust, Glasgow’s by The Aye Write! festival and Bristol’s by Bristol Reads’ The Great Reading Adventure.

Edinburgh UNESCO City of Literature Trust

Welcome to our city built on books, brimming with writers and readers and home to the world’s largest Book Festival. Edinburgh is the world’s first UNESCO City of Literature, full of literary landmarks and an inspiration not only for world famous classic Scottish literature but also contemporary writers. The City of Literature Trust is here to support Edinburgh’s literature, and to help you get involved with books, words, reading, poetry and storytelling.

We host a What’s On guide for literary events and run the very popular One Book – One Edinburgh citywide reading campaign. These and all our projects follow our aims: to promote book culture in Edinburgh, to encourage involvement in Scotland’s literature and to develop literary partnerships around the world.

We have a Lost World Read 2009 section on our website: find out about the book, events, the schools programme, and get news about the reading campaign.

Glasgow Aye Write! Festival

The Aye Write! Bank of Scotland Book Festival celebrates the rich variety of Glaswegian writing and also brings the best of Scottish and international writers to the city. The festival, which is sponsored by the Bank of Scotland, the Scottish Arts Council and has a media partnership with The Herald, is now in its fourth year and takes place annually in March at the Mitchell Library in the heart of Glasgow.

The 2009 festival ran from 6 March to 14 March. It launched with one of Britain’s finest writers, Alan Bennett, in a special charity event with Visibility and included award-winning writers like Graham Swift, Joan Bakewell, A L Kennedy, Melvyn Bragg and Robert Fisk.

Bristol Reads

Bristol Reads runs the Great Reading Adventure. The Great Reading Adventure started in 2003 with a citywide reading of Treasure Island, and the project is now a well established part of Bristol’s cultural calendar.

The Great Reading Adventure aims to:

• Develop standards of literacy through the promotion of reading.

• Stimulate new forms of creativity inspired by the reading experience.

• Use reading to facilitate learning about the past.

• Bring diverse communities together through the act of reading and thereby foster a sense of shared identity.