The Edinburgh Festival of those days was a much more accessible village... The ground rules were well enough understood. Everything about it was containable. The Fringe was the seed bed for talent and ran happily in step with its established elders and betters. They both knew their place. But then something equally remarkable was about to take place in the New Town of the city I knew and loved... The same year, Roddy Martine is born. In 1963 when, at the age of sixteen, he interviewed Sir Yehudi Menuhin and David Frost for an Edinburgh Festival magazine he edited and the following year, met Marlene Dietrich. Both Richard and Roddy have unique perspectives on the most remarkable international festival of the arts the world has ever known. They have witnessed its evolution over the years and are passionate believers in the power of creativity within everyone. In this fascinating book, Richard – the 2013 UK recipient of the Citizen of Europe medal – explores the original world vision of Sir John Falconer and Rudolph Bing and, with Roddy, recalls the highs and lows of The Edinburgh International Festival, The Fringe, Art, Book, Jazz and Television Festivals, and The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo. Now in its eighth decade, can the Edinburgh Festival survive? Where do we go from here?

Presents a collection of Scottish autobiographical essays of George Davie, David Daiches, Robin Jenkins, Muriel Spark, Tom Nairn, Edwin Morgan, Derick Thomson, Alastair Reid, Agnes Owens, Ronald Stevenson, Richard Demarco, Elizabeth Blackadder, Alasdair Gray, Stewart Conn, Hugh Pennington, Allan Massie, Duncan Macmillan, John Byrne, and others.

List of members in each volume.

After 50 years in the education system, in both England and Scotland, as pupil and teacher, Seån McPartlin looks back and reflects on the importance of pastoral guidance, the elements needed for a successful school, and the joy of working with pupils, families, and colleagues during a career he considered a vocation. From nervous first day pupil in suburban Edinburgh, through teaching in city centre comprehensive, a youth strategy support centre in the inner city, and finally as a Depute Head in West Lothian, he writes with authority and enthusiasm about education, its place in society and how we develop our views of the system. Most of all he seeks to answer the question: What was all that about?

Edinburgh and Glasgow enjoy a famously scratchy relationship. Resembling other intercity rivalries throughout the world, from Madrid and Barcelona, to Moscow and St. Petersburg, to Beijing and Shanghai, Scotland’s sparring metropolises just happen to be much smaller and closer together—like twin stars orbiting a common axis. Yet their size belies their world-historical importance as cultural and commercial capitals of the British Empire, and the mere forty miles between their city centers does not diminish their stubbornly individual nature. Robert Crawford dares to bring both cities to life between the covers of one book. His story of the fluctuating fortunes of each city is animated by the one-upping that has been entrenched since the eighteenth century, when Edinburgh lost parliamentary sovereignty and took on its proud wistfulness, while Glasgow came into its industrial promise and defiance. Using landmarks and individuals as gateways to their character and past, this tale of two cities mixes novelty and familiarity just as Scotland’s capital and its largest city do. Crawford gives us Adam Smith and Walter Scott, the Scottish Enlightenment and the School of Art, but also tiny apartments, a poetry library, Spanish Civil War volunteers, and the nineteenth-century entrepreneur Maria Theresa Short. We see Glasgow’s best-known street through the eyes of a Victorian child, and Edinburgh University as it appeared to Charles Darwin. Crawford's lively account, drawing on a wealth of historical and literary sources, affirms what people from Glasgow and Edinburgh have long doubted—that it is possible to love both cities at the same time.