So it’s goodbye from the Wigtown Book Festival to its sponsor Baillie Gifford, the Edinburgh-based investment company that has gained pariah status in the past year. In doing so, Wigtown joins a line of fast-toppling dominos in this tale of woe. Casualties already include Hay-on-Wye, the Edinburgh International Book Festival (EIBF) and the Borders Book Festival, all of which have recently announced they are parting ways with Baillie Gifford.

At the same time as Wigtown, the asset manager also cut its links to the Cheltenham and Stratford book festivals. Those at Henley and Wimbledon swiftly followed, and Baillie Gifford has now said that it will end all sponsorship of book festivals by the close of this year.

What a victory for climate activists and Pro-Palestinian campaigners, foremost among them Fossil Free Books (FFB), whose aim is “A literary industry free from fossil fuels, genocide and colonial violence”. In a matter of months, like children tormenting flies they have managed to tear the wings off the British book festival industry.

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Wigtown Book Festival to end Baillie Gifford partnership

Respect for free speech needed after book festival loses sponsor – Swinney

Was it only last August that all this started? In a messy confrontation at the EIBF, several authors walked out of their own events and 50 wrote an open letter urging all writers to boycott the 2024 festival unless Baillie Gifford divested itself of carbon clients or the festival pulled the plug on them. Those ominous rumblings of discontent have now resulted in the wholesale loss across the sector of funding from a company that has been tarred and feathered out of all proportion to its........

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