Coffee-Table Notes

King's Theatre Four stars The idealised Edinburgh skyline that formed the back-drop to this Edinburgh International Festival edition of the rolling compendium of readings from celebrated bon mots down the centuries was an all too fitting image. Edinburgh, as head of Canongate Books Jamie Byng pointed out in his introduction, was UNESCO's first city of literature, and those steeped in its bookish heritage understand what words are worth more than many. This is one of the reasons why the proceeds of the night were being donated to the Craigmillar Literary Trust and the Scottish Book Trust, both fine organisations that literally spread the word at every level. It was a soulful version of Nick Cave's song, Love Letter, performed by Kelvin Jones, that opened a night that focused on standing up to intolerance by way of hand-me-down wisdom. Louise Brealey read Laura Dern's letter to her twelve year old daughter, while Clint Dyer presented James Baldwin's 1963 miss...

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh 4 stars If Clare Balding wasn't already considered a national treasure, her ubiquity anchoring this year's London Paralympics has confirmed it. This may be why her autobiography, the tellingly named My Animals and Other Family, has been number one best-seller for the last two weeks. For a woman whose entire life has been spent in a horse-racing world where competition and the thrill of the chase means everything, one suspects these sorts of things matter to Balding. By the time she ambles onstage for this sold out talk sporting sloppy sweat shirt and jeans, Balding has already done a signing in St Boswell's, with one in Milngavie to go as part of a suitably marathon tour. Over an hour, Balding relates in impeccably jolly hockey-sticks tones a life which sounds not unlike one great big Girl's Own adventure, from posing for pictures astride legendary race-horse Mill Reef aged eighteen months, to being suspended from the same board...