Scottish postmaster wrongly convicted in Post Office Horizon scandal to speak at book festival

Robert “Rab” Thompson – a postmaster from Alloa wrongly convicted of theft in 2006 - will appear on stage at the Boswell Book Festival alongside journalist Nick Wallis.

Mr Wallis’s book, The Great Post Office Scandal, was behind the hit ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office. The programme and highlighted the scandal that saw almost 1,000 postmasters convicted of theft, fraud and false accounting due to apparent financial shortfalls caused by faults in the Horizon software.

Mr Thomson was found guilty in 2006 after an audit showed an apparent shortfall of nearly £6,000 at his Cambus Post Office near Alva, which he had taken over from his mother in the early 2000s. His conviction was finally overturned last year.

In its 15th year, the festival, which will be held in May at Dumfries House, will also feature much-loved poet Pam Ayres, famed ballet dancer Wayne Sleep and Anthony Seldon, who has written biographies of prime ministers, including Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Boris Johnson, as well as the story of a Scotland-based monk’s murder in China.

Named in honour of Ayrshire writer, James Boswell, the inventor of modern biography, the festival features more than 40 events.

Mr Thomson said: “It has only just started to set in that my conviction has finally been over-turned. I never thought I would see this day.

“I just wish my mum was here to see this, too, but sadly she passed away before my name had been cleared. The conviction felt like a noose around my neck for so many years, but I never stopped fighting to clear my name.

Festival director Caroline Knox said: “Powerful personal testimonies abound in this year’s programme, opening our eyes to new worlds even on our own doorstep. With well over 40 events, plus workshops, across four venues, it is no exaggeration to say that ‘All Human Life is Here’ – and that’s not to forget our hugely popular children’s festival programme at the Dumfries House Engineering Centre.”

The 80th anniversaries of VE and VJ Days will also be commemorated. Journalist John Sweeney will be talking about his book Murder in the Gulag on the death of Soviet dissident leader, Alexei Navalny.

Other writers tell of how one event has changed their lives, such as Chloe Dalton with her best-selling, critically acclaimed Raising Hare; Juano Diaz whose early life in Glasgow with an addict mother was saved by trips to Kelvingrove Art Galley. Buddhist monk Gelong Thubten will also speak on coping with the news that his spiritual teacher, the leader of the Samye Ling monastery in Dumfriesshire, had been murdered in Chengdu, China.

The eclectic range of topics offers festival goers the chance to hear comedian Dom Joly on his immersion in the strange world of conspiracy theorists; TV art historian, Bendor Grosvenor on who’s in and who’s out in the story of British art; and double champion swimmer Rebecca Achieng Ajulu-Bushell on why she walked away from her sport.

The festival’s Ayrshire roots is reflected in novelist Andrew O’Hagan’s keynote address on the great tradition of home-grown satire from Robert Burns to Billy Connolly. There is also the previously unpublished soldiers’ accounts of the Ayrshire Yeomanry in the World War One Gallipoli campaign and the UK film premiere of the biopic on James ‘Corsica’ Boswell, exploring the intertwined lives and times of Boswell and Corsica’s rebel leader, General Pascale Paoli.