Join us for this special standalone event with the brilliant Val McDermid, who’ll be helping us to launch the 2024 Bloody Scotland programme. Val will be in conversation with Craig Robertson about her dark and bloody latest novel, Queen MacBeth.

Shakespeare fed us the myth of the Macbeths as murderous conspirators. But now Val McDermid drags the truth out of the shadows, exposing the patriarchal prejudices of history. Expect the unexpected. A thousand years ago in an ancient Scottish landscape, a woman is on the run with her three companions – a healer, a weaver and a seer. The men hunting her will kill her – because she is the only one who stands between them and their violent ambition. She is no lady: she is the first queen of Scotland, married to a king called Macbeth. Thursday 20th June at 1.30pm in The Golden Lion Hotel, Stirling. Tickets £6/£5