A highly-respected world music journalist who was a long-term contributor to The Scotsman has died from colon cancer at the age of 63.

Jan Fairley was the former director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival from 1995-97 and was credited with turning it into a major event on the world book scene.

She was known as a champion of world music, regularly writing about it in The Scotsman, and made a number of documentaries for Radio 4, while she was a member of the judging panel for the BBC Radio 3 World Music Awards.

Jan was also the welfare officer for the Edinburgh Freelance branch of the National Union of Journalists.

Andrew Eaton-Lewis, Scotland on Sunday’s arts editor, said: “She was an extraordinary woman. She was always incredibly full of life and lived very fiercely. She did so many things and went to so many places.

“She always became friends with the people she interviewed, she was that sort of person.”

Jan died last Saturday and leaves her children Rachel, Tom and Fran, their partners Dono, Bea and Stu, grandchildren Kabe and Theo, her sister Mary and her brother Rod.