Best-selling author Alexander McCall Smith was so inspired by this year’s Tobermory Book Festival that he wrote a poem about it.
He read the poem out loud at the festival’s gala dinner night on Saturday at the Western Isles Hotel.
This year’s event welcomed authors and audiences from across Mull, across Scotland and from further afield.
Talks were sold-out while other sessions from authors, including Mull interior designer and TV presenter Banjo Beale, entertained to full capacity and had standing room only.
Conversations over the weekend ranged from the challenges of rewilding gardens to protecting marine mammals to the life and times of diplomat, soldier and adventurer Sir Fitzroy Maclean.
Authors Dougie Strang and Kerri Andrews spoke of the creative inspiration they took from walking. Playwright David Greig explained how his walk to Iona, although unplanned, had inspired his first novel.
Other authors at the festival included Isabella Tree, Natalie Sanders, Sarah Ross Thompson and Jane Smith.
Every author enjoyed a lively question-and-answer session with their audience at the end of their talk.
Audiences had a chance to mingle and meet the authors over a mouth-watering lunch provided by the Ulva Boathouse, and two delicious dinners at the Western Isles Hotel, which hosted events alongside An Tobar.
And Alan Windram, Oban-based publisher and author of the award-winning One Button Benny series of picture books, led action-packed workshops for children from Mull and Iona primary schools as part of the Children’s Fringe Book Festival.
Organisers said they were thrilled with audience feedback and said the festival, now in its fourth year, was fast becoming a fixture in Mull’s cultural calendar helping extend the summer season by giving people a reason to visit late in October.