Alan Cumming among Wigtown Book Festival highlights

Alan Cumming is one of the big names at this year's festival

Actor Alan Cumming has been revealed as one of the highlights on the programme for the Wigton Book Festival next month.

Performance poet Pam Ayres, singer Cerys Matthews and novelist Irvine Welsh are also part of the event at Scotland's national book town.

Held from 27 September to 6 October, it includes a "festival within a festival" of food hosted by the Hebridean Baker, Coinneach MacLeod.

Festival programmer Lee Randall said she hoped the "range and reach" of more than 250 events would prove a hit.

Wigtown celebrated 25 years as the country's national book town last year.

The latest edition of its festival is the first since Baillie Gifford withdrew from a sponsorship deal after more than a decade of support.

It was one of a number of events which saw its links ended following pressure from climate change protesters.

The programme at Wigtown hopes to offer something for "all tastes and ages, with a host of well-known faces".

Among their number are naturalist Kate Humble, comedian Janey Godley and Strictly Come Dancing champion Hamza Yassin.

A "festival within a festival" celebrating food will be held in Wigtown

Ms Randall said: "Nothing makes me happier than bringing readers and writers together.

"I hope this year’s programme, with all its range and reach, proves a hit with our regular visitors while also enticing first-timers into the fold.

"We make sense of our world through the stories we tell one another, and this year’s crop of authors have amazing, fascinating, even hilarious tales to share."

The James Mirrlees Lecture - which marks the life of the locally-born Nobel Prize-winning economist - will be delivered this year by Sophie Yeo, author of the acclaimed Nature’s Ghosts.

The festival will also see the announcement of the winners of the annual international Wigtown Poetry Prizes while Brian Taylor will present the third Anne Brown Essay Prize.