The Boswell Festival Online Rover Pass gives you access to all talks being streamed at this year's Festival.

Most livestreamed events will be available to watch at any time from the live event broadcast time until the 30th May.

An exclusive event for all the family. Age 7+

With the success of the Lionesses having changed the map for women’s football forever, come and hear the legendary Ayrshire footballer Rose Reilly MBE, the only Scottish person to have won a football World Cup.

Despite her early and obvious skills on the park she was barred from playing football with the boys at school, and so took to disguising herself as a boy called 'Ross'.

During the 1960s and 1970s it was unheard of for a woman to be a successful football player in Scotland, so at just 17, Rose moved abroad to become a professional footballer with Reims in France before moving to AC Milan where, in 1983 she scored the winning goal in the Women's World Cup final which gave Italy the title over the United States of America, and was voted the world’s best female footballer. Rose also represented Scotland at international level.

Louise Baillie’s new book Spectacular Scottish Women tells the story of 30 inspirational women including poet Jackie Kay, percussionist Evelyn Glennie and Rose Reilly herself.

In conversation with Louise Baillie

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May Day is the long-awaited new collection from one of our best-loved poets and former Makar of Scotland, Jackie Kay. As the title suggests, these poems cast an eye over several decades of political activism, from the international solidarity of the Glasgow of Kay’s childhood, accompanying her parents’ Socialist campaigns, through the feminist, LGBT+ and anti-racist movements of the 80s and 90s, up to the present day when a global pandemic intersects with the urgency of Black Lives Matter.

Kay brings to life a cast of influential figures, delving beneath the surfaces of received narratives: the Jamaican model Fanny Eaton, for example, muse of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in England; Paul Robeson, Angela Davis and the poet Audre Lorde; and a ‘what-if’ poem concerning Rabbie Burns and a road-not-taken towards the West Indian slave trade. Woven through the collection is a suite of lyric poems concerning the recent losses of Kay’s parents: poems of grief and profound change that are infused with the light of love and celebration.

In conversation with Sheena McDonald

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Rory Stewart's pre-recorded interview. BBC’s Allan Little will introduce this recorded interview on the festival stage.

In his best-selling book, Politics On The Edge, Rory Stewart relates how over the course of a decade as an MP, he went from being a political outsider to becoming an effective government minister to standing for prime minister - before being sacked from a Conservative Party that he had come to barely recognise. Stewart learned at first-hand how hollow our democracy and government had become as individual politicians laid the foundations for today’s political and economic chaos.

Grounded in his earlier careers as a Scottish soldier, diplomat, travel writer, philanthropist and international academic, he talks with wisdom and approachability – familiar to his thousands of followers on-line including from his co-hosted podcast The Rest is Politics – on our era of populism and global conflict offering sanity and empathy in a disputatious age.

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For the legion who watch BBC’s Two Doors Down, Doon Mackichan’s role as Cathy is a fan-favourite. Irresistibly funny and hugely admired, multi award-winning actress and writer Doon’s other comedy credits include Plebs (for which she was nominated for a BAFTA), Brass Eye, Alan Partridge and the double Emmy-winning Smack the Pony.

Reflecting on 40 years in ‘the business’, My Lady Parts explores the bear pit of the stand-up comedy circuit and highlights her determination to take on ground-breaking and challenging comedy roles while at the same time coping as a working mother in a business that does not exactly welcome babies and children.

Fearless and funny as ever, in her inimitable style comedienne Doon will talk about the ways in which society still expects women to adhere to certain stereotypes, calling for a radical rework of attitude for future generations.

In conversation with Anna Burnside

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Esther Rutter’s pre-recorded interview with Susan Mansfield

William and Dorothy Wordsworth are an essential element in this powerful memoir of recovery from mental illness.

In her early twenties, Esther Rutter suffered a breakdown while teaching English in Japan. Sectioned and held in a Japanese psychiatric institution until she could be flown home, her recovery only began when she went to live and work in the Lake District, becoming immersed in the realm of the great poet William Wordsworth.

As an intern at Dove Cottage, Wordsworth’s home, at first Rutter finds the landscape itself alien and intimidating, and lurking among those hills is the fear of a regression into her mental illness. Slowly, she sets about drawing together from her surroundings the threads of her personal story, recovery, and the legacy of the Wordsworth siblings who brought her there.

Her search for a sense of belonging intertwined with the stories of the Wordsworths and the Dove Cottage community culminated in lifelong bonds of friendship, and – finally – love.

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