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Edinburgh International Book Festival celebrates 40 years as a literary world leader. We hear from a number of festival bosses about the highlights (and mishaps) of doing the job, while Nick Barley marks his final campaign by paying tribute to a much-missed director

One of the highlights was actually a no-show: Hunter S Thompson’s failure to turn up at the very last minute, despite his publishers laying on every inducement possible in Scotland, from golf to grouse. His black-leathered fans turned away meekly at the box office, muttering that they had never really expected him to come anyway.

Many of the best moments inevitably happened offstage: authors meeting for the first time such as Angela Carter and Jan Pieńkowski, surrounded by a host of children, in front of the huge frieze they created that morning. And two memorable handshakes: one, captured by The Guardian, was between Amos Oz and Ben Okri by the statue of Prince Albert. The other was an encounter, over breakfast in the Roxburghe Hotel, between two stars of the very first festival in 1983. One proffered his hand: ‘Updike? Burgess . . . we have corresponded.’