The Border Telegraph has again teamed up with the Borders Book Festival this year. Here, director Alistair Moffat looks ahead to the event...

Welcome back’ is a sentence I plan to utter hundreds of times this summer.

After two years of COVID exile, the Borders Book Festival is back in Harmony Garden in Melrose. And we plan to have fun! Goodness knows, we need some.

Between Thursday, June 16 and Sunday, June 19 the marquees will rock with laughter, buzz with excitement and crackle with brilliant comment and questions.

Only two weeks after the Platinum Jubilee Bank Holiday, Dame Joanna Lumley (as we must learn to call her) will come to Melrose to talk about her glorious new book, ‘A Queen for All Seasons’, and encourage us to celebrate the life and devotion of our much-loved monarch. Rory Bremner will bring scores of famous voices in The Scottish Impressionists, a show specially devised for the festival when he joins forces with Ronni Ancona and Lewis MacLeod. One of Britain’s best-loved comedians is Julian Clary and he will be at Harmony to talk about The Lick of Love: How Dogs Changed My Life.

"Whatever is going on, it is the water bowl in the kitchen, the dog hair on my jumper, the knowing gaze from the dog in the basket beside me that comforts me and tells me that all is well", said Julian in one of the most distinctive voices in show business.

After twenty years at the BBC, Andrew Marr will talk about his time as a political editor, a documentary maker and presenter of the Andrew Marr Show.

And at last Jim Naughtie will resume his inimitable series of annual reports, exclusively for the Borders Book Festival, on global and national politics. He has a lot of catching up to do.

A glittering shortlist of historical novelists will gather in the marquee to listen to Richard Buccleuch announce the winner of the Walter Scott Prize, an award that has done so much for the genre of fiction that was invented at Abbotsford.

To help celebrate the successful opening of the new Trimontium Museum in Melrose, a superb, gem-like exposition of Roman Scotland, we feature Douglas Jackson’s new novel. ‘The Wall’ tells the story of Marcus Flavius Victor and Rome’s greatest frontier. Lindsey Davis brings us the latest installment of her superb Flavia Alba series, ‘Desperate Undertaking’, a gripping ancient detective mystery.

Borders Book Festival will also include the ever-popular Family Book Festival, and Julian Clary will take part, talking about Teddington’s wildest family, the Bolds.

And all of the above is only a taster. With more than a hundred events to take place in the June sunshine (it will, it will, how can it not?), the full programme will be published in mid-April when tickets go on sale. But before then, take a big, black pencil and write in capital letters in your diary or on your calendar on 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th June 16, 17, 18 and 19. Borders Book Festival, Harmony Garden, Melrose.

Welcome back!

For further information and to keep in touch visit: www.bordersbookfestival.org