Edinburgh International Festival and Fringe: Two Different August Institutions

Edinburgh International Festival and Fringe: Two Different August Institutions Every August, visitors to Edinburgh discover that “the festival” is really several festivals at once, and that the two oldest are run on almost opposite principles. The Edinburgh International Festival is a curated programme of orchestras, opera, theatre and dance, chosen by a single director and […]

Old Town and New Town Edinburgh: Heritage, Streetscapes and Festival Staging

Old Town and New Town Edinburgh: Heritage, Streetscapes and Festival Staging Stand in the valley gardens below Edinburgh Castle and the city’s history is laid out on either side of you. To the south rises the Old Town, a medieval burgh packed along a narrow volcanic ridge, all tall tenements and steep stepped closes; to […]

Edinburgh Festival Fringe: Open Access, Eight Companies and a Festival City

Edinburgh Festival Fringe: Open Access, Eight Companies and a Festival City In the summer of 1947, eight theatre companies arrived in Edinburgh without an invitation and put on their plays anyway, on the edges of the city’s brand-new International Festival. From that act of self-invitation grew the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the event most visitors simply […]

Edinburgh Fringe History: From 1947 Opposition to a Global Cultural Platform

Edinburgh Fringe History: From 1947 Opposition to a Global Cultural Platform The Edinburgh Fringe began as an uninvited arrival. In 1947 a handful of theatre companies, left out of Edinburgh’s new International Festival, came anyway and found their own stages; within a few decades their unofficial gathering had grown to hundreds of companies. Edinburgh Fringe […]

Edinburgh Fringe Venues: How Theatres, Halls and Temporary Spaces Shape Performance

Edinburgh Fringe Venues: How Theatres, Halls and Temporary Spaces Shape Performance Most festivals are built around a handful of stages. The Fringe is built around hundreds of them, and many were not built as theatres. Edinburgh Fringe venues include Georgian assembly rooms, converted churches, university buildings, purpose-built studios and halls fitted out with temporary seating […]

Edinburgh International Book Festival: Books, Debate and the Festival City

Edinburgh International Book Festival: Books, Debate and the Festival City Alongside the theatre, music and comedy of an Edinburgh August runs a quieter but no less lively festival of ideas. The Edinburgh International Book Festival brings writers and readers together for two weeks of talks, conversations and debate, and it gives the world’s first UNESCO […]

Edinburgh City of Literature: Printing, Publishing and a Global Literary Identity

Edinburgh City of Literature: Printing, Publishing and a Global Literary Identity In October 2004, at a ceremony in Paris, UNESCO named Edinburgh the world’s first City of Literature. The title recognised a history that runs back five centuries: the earliest surviving dated book printed in Scotland was finished in the city in 1508, the first […]

Scottish Enlightenment Edinburgh: Clubs, Print Culture and the New Town

Scottish Enlightenment Edinburgh: Clubs, Print Culture and the New Town In the middle decades of the eighteenth century, a crowded medieval city on a ridge became one of the intellectual centres of Europe. To understand Scottish Enlightenment Edinburgh, it helps to look beyond famous names such as David Hume and Adam Smith to how they […]

Edinburgh UNESCO World Heritage: Managing a Living Historic City

Edinburgh UNESCO World Heritage: Managing a Living Historic City Many World Heritage Sites are ruins, monuments or landscapes. Edinburgh’s is a working capital, where people live in centuries-old tenements, offices fill Georgian townhouses and the streets host one of the world’s largest arts gatherings every August. Understanding Edinburgh’s UNESCO World Heritage status means understanding a […]

Edinburgh Castle: Fortress, Military Garrison and National Symbol

Edinburgh Castle: Fortress, Military Garrison and National Symbol Few buildings define a city as completely as Edinburgh Castle. Set high above the Old Town, it has been a royal residence, a besieged fortress, a barracks for soldiers and prisoners, and the home of Scotland’s crown jewels. Following how Edinburgh Castle’s role changed over the centuries […]

Palace of Holyroodhouse: Court, Ceremony and Government at the Foot of the Royal Mile

Palace of Holyroodhouse: Court, Ceremony and Government at the Foot of the Royal Mile At one end of Edinburgh’s Royal Mile stands the castle on its rock; at the other, in the shadow of Arthur’s Seat, stands a palace. The Palace of Holyroodhouse grew out of a medieval abbey, became the home of Scotland’s royal […]

Royal Yacht Britannia: Leith, Decommissioning and the Afterlife of a Royal Vessel

Royal Yacht Britannia: Leith, Decommissioning and the Afterlife of a Royal Vessel For more than four decades she carried the royal family around the world. Since 1998 she has been moored in Leith, Edinburgh’s port, where visitors walk through rooms that once hosted state banquets and family holidays. The Royal Yacht Britannia’s story falls into […]

National Museum of Scotland: Telling a National Story Through Objects

National Museum of Scotland: Telling a National Story Through Objects On Chambers Street in Edinburgh’s Old Town, two very different buildings tell one story. A Victorian hall of cast iron and light holds the natural world, world cultures, science and design; beside it, a modern building of golden sandstone tells the history of Scotland from […]

National Galleries of Scotland: Art, Collecting and Public Culture in Edinburgh

National Galleries of Scotland: Art, Collecting and Public Culture in Edinburgh Edinburgh’s national art collections are spread across three sites: a neoclassical gallery on the Mound near Princes Street, a red sandstone portrait gallery on Queen Street, and the modern art galleries on Belford Road. Together they form the National Galleries of Scotland, and their […]

Edinburgh Festivals: How August Turned a Capital into a Festival City

Edinburgh Festivals: How August Turned a Capital into a Festival City For most of the year Edinburgh is a working capital of courts, banks, universities and government offices, but each August the Edinburgh festivals take it over so thoroughly that the city seems to be performing itself. Church halls become theatres, university quadrangles fill with […]

The Isle of Skye on a Small Group Tour: Dunvegan Castle, Armadale and Portree

The Isle of Skye on a Small Group Tour: Dunvegan Castle, Armadale and Portree Skye is the largest of the Inner Hebrides and, for many people, the island that defines the Highlands: volcanic ridges, sea lochs on every side, and a history of clans, a fugitive prince and the crofting townships emptied by the Clearances. […]

Orkney Tours for Mature Travellers: Skara Brae, Gurness Broch and Neolithic Orkney

Orkney Tours for Mature Travellers: Skara Brae, Gurness Broch and Neolithic Orkney Orkney lies barely ten kilometres off the north coast of mainland Scotland, yet it holds the densest concentration of prehistoric sites in Britain. Five thousand years ago its farmers were building stone villages with dressers and box beds, while the pyramids of Giza […]

Shetland Tours for Mature Travellers: Jarlshof, Mousa and Four Days on the Islands

Shetland Tours for Mature Travellers: Jarlshof, Mousa and Four Days on the Islands Shetland sits closer to Bergen than to Edinburgh. It was ruled from Norway until 1469, its place names are still largely Norse, and on a clear day at Sumburgh Head the cliffs seem to lean out towards the open North Atlantic. On […]

England’s Estate Villages: Planned Settlements, Paternalism and Rural Design

England’s Estate Villages: Planned Settlements, Paternalism and Rural Design Some English villages grew slowly, house by house, as families built where and how they could. Others were made by a single owner. In an estate village, the land, the cottages, the school and often the church belonged to the landed family at the big house, […]

Cotswold Wool Churches: Trade, Parish and Perpendicular Architecture

Cotswold Wool Churches: Trade, Parish and Perpendicular Architecture Some of the finest parish churches in England stand in small Cotswold towns that today seem far too modest for them. Their tall towers, great windows and carved porches were paid for, in large part, by the late-medieval wool trade, when the wool of the Cotswold sheep, […]

Yorkshire Dry-Stone Walls: Building the Boundaries of the Dales

Yorkshire Dry-Stone Walls: Building the Boundaries of the Dales Look across almost any valley in the Yorkshire Dales and the first thing you notice is the net of grey walls laid over the green: tight, crooked enclosures around the villages, then larger fields on the lower slopes, then long straight lines marching up the fellsides […]