FORT George, to the north east of Inverness, will this weekend stage Amazing Ages!, an event featuring live music and performers telling the tales of different periods of Scottish history.

Caledonian Ceildh Trail kick-off Saturday’s line-up, followed by The Margaret Stewart Trio, Malinky and concluding with Edinburgh-based six piece Shooglenifty. Gaelic singer Julie Fowlis is the closing act on Sunday.

There will be also be an opportunity to view archaeological find The Orkney Venus. On show here for the weekend only, the Orkney Venus is the earliest known representation of the human form in Scotland. Carved in stone about 4,500 years ago, it was found in 2009 during an excavation on Westray, Orkney.

The weekend is free for Historic Scotland members.

historicenvironment.scot

THE ISLE of Skye's Book Festival begins at the end of the month and Graeme Macrae Burnet, author of His Bloody Project, will be taking part. The writer was born and brought up in Kilmarnock but his mother was from Lochcarron, near Skye.

Macrae Burnet, pictured, said: “Many of the incidents in the narrative were directly inspired by things I came across in the course of my research into the lives of Highland crofting communities in the 19th century.” He joins Ian Rankin and other leading writers at the Festival.

The Skye Book festival is a project of Cleas, a charity for the encouragement and provision of the performing arts within Skye and Lochalsh. The festival runs from August 31 to September 2.

skyebookfestival.co.uk

SCOTS singer Ella Munro will be August’s guest at Partick Folk Club when she appears with her trio at St Peter's Hall in Chancellor Street on Friday, August 25. Originally from Skye, Munro studied Scots singing with Mick West at the Centre of Excellence in Traditional Music at Plockton and is currently studying on the Scottish Music course at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow. She reached the final of the BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year competition in February and plans to release her debut EP in January.

partickfolkclub.org.uk

THE PROGRAMME for Islay Jazz Festival has been announced. This year’s line-up includes solo concert in Bowmore’s Round Church by saxophonist Tommy Smith, the first Scottish presentation of a setting that was one of the hits of the Rochester Jazz Festival in New York this summer, and concerts by young pianists Alan Benzie and Fergus McCreadie. Smith also plays a duo concert with long-time musical partner, pianist Brian Kellock and there are festival appearances by singers Jacqui Dankworth, Seonaid Aitken, Luca Manning and Becc Sanderson, guitarists Graeme Stephen and Kevin Mackenzie, Parisian swing quartet Rose Room, and Islay regulars, trumpeter Colin Steele and bassist Mario Caribe. The festival runs in various venues across the island from September 15 to 17.

islayjazzfestival.co.uk