Images Edinburgh festival 2026

I’ve been making the journeys over to Edinburgh festivals the past twenty years. August is Edinburgh festival – art, music, theatre, books, comedy, dance, opera – all the arts interplay and overlap together to make this unique melting pot of what makes art special in our lives, lifts us up and why art matters. I’ve taken photos at the Fringe and the book festival.

There’s the official International festival which this year is titled ALL RISE, to celebrate the links to America and the 250 years since America’s Declaration if independence. 

The Edinburgh International Festival 2026 – 7-30 August 2026

“I am, All Rise.. look further, look beyond, can’t you see - look higher. I’m going to rise and rise.’

World-class Opera, Music, Theatre and Dance over 24 days and 147 performances. With 5 world premieres, and 10 works commissioned by the Festival. All Rise is a rallying cry encompassing collaboration, resilience and ascendance. To experience themes of freedom, ingenuity, prejudice, and hypocrisy, alongside the creative achievements made possible by the friction and energy of America's cultural melting pot. 

Nicola Benedetti - I fell in love with U S of A. instantly. I was 16 years old and within 24 hours my relationship to its “wild, abrasive, exuberant, heart filled yet harsh ferocity was sealed. I was shocked and intoxicated.”

 

There’s the International Edinburgh book festival at the Futures institute, August 15 to 30,

with 600 writers from 41 different countries. of fiction, politics, science, history, music and live performances. 150 events for families, and young adults. The theme 2026, "Changing Your Mind", to encourage visitors to "stay open and curious, championing deep listening and celebrating our capacity to evolve our thinking".  Former first minister Nicola Sturgeon, "How to lead a country" along with former Finnish PM Sanna Marin, memoirs, Frankly and Hope in Action. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, and technology writer Cory Doctorow. Leading writers - John Grisham, Ian Rankin, Maggie O'Farrell, Ali Smith, Jenni Fagan, Matt Haig and 2026 International Booker Prize winner Yáng Shuāng-z(Image: D

With a focus on trust and information, with conversations with journalists, researchers examining misinformation, and global narratives. Plus the rapid growth of AI and its regulation, with Steve Crossan, original DeepMind team, and Sarah Wynn-Williams, former director of public policy at Facebook.

There’s the Edinburgh FRINGE festival – with over 4,000 shows, performers from all across the world. Its comedy festival is a a major attraction. Edinburgh festival was one of the first major arts festivals begun after the second world war. Edinburgh festival was one of the first major arts festivals begun after the second world war In 1947, the founding vision was to reunite people through art. People overcame the post-war darkness, division and austerity in a blooming of festival spirit. In the 1970s with only a few hundred shows.

Burns Poetry and Song

 

Burns poetry and Song have become a symbolic touchstone of Scottish identity for generations, The Patriot Bard, by Patrick Scott Hogg

In the age of enlightenment Burns believed in the power of reason and common sense. When there was a crackdown on democratic reform. The Jacobite cause was symbolic of the country’s lost, romantic past. 

 

The tyrannical oppression of the Pitt government brought the enlightenment movement to its knees and silenced the leading minds of a generation. Burns risked his life and freedom to continue composing such radical material of social satire during his last few years. He published anonymously Scots Wa Hae as he considered it too seditious.

 

William Pitt (1759 –1806) was a British statesman who served as the last prime minister of Great Britain from 1783 until the Acts of Union 1800, and the first official Prime minister of the UK from January 1801. 

He left office in March 1801, but served as prime minister again from 1804 until his death in 1806. He is known as "Pitt the Younger" to distinguish him from his father, William Pitt the Elder, who had also previously served as prime minister from 1766–1768.

Pitt's premierships, during the reign of King George III were dominated by major political events in Europe, including the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. Pitt, is often referred to by historians as a Tory or "new Tory", and called himself an "independent Whig and was generally opposed to the development of a strict partisan political system. Pitt was regarded as a good administrator who worked for efficiency. He increased taxes to pay for the great war against France and cracked down on radicalism. To counter the threat of Irish support for France, he engineered the Acts of Union 1800. 

 

The Glenriddell Manuscripts

 

Libraries were to give access to all – The Glenriddell Manuscripts helped to set up the National Library of Scotland 1926. 

The Manuscripts were written to preserve Robert Burns’s chosen poems and letters, illuminating his creative process. Compiled between 1789 and 1793. 

Two Volumes – One of Poems and Songs. The Second Burns Letters. Such a Holy Willies prayer with explanations. Some are the only surviving manuscripts of some poems. They are held in the National Library of Scotland since its founding in 1925, 

 

The manuscripts are not merely important for their link to Burns and their contents, although this is undoubtedly a major part of their appeal. They are also intrinsically linked to the foundation and establishment of the Library itself and are here, in part, because there was a national library in Scotland in which to hold them.

 

The Glenriddell Manuscripts are one of the most significant collections of original Robert Burns material to be found anywhere in the world. They are considered one of the greatest treasures held by the National Library of Scotland. The manuscripts are important for their link to Burns and are also linked to the establishment of the Library.

 

Burns's comments on his poetry and prose offer a unique record of his earlier work, with insights into the poet's thought process for their composition and execution. Burns provided insights into his letters and as he often wrote a covering headnote with details about their contents or why he decided to include them in the volume.

Following Burns death, they went on an extraordinary journey before returning to Scotland. (Ralph McLean, manuscripts curator collections at the National Library of Scotland).

The two volumes stayed with the Burns family until his widow, Jean, loaned them to Burns's first biographer, James Currie, so that he could produce his edition of 'The Works of Robert Burns'.

 

Journey to the National Library of Scotland

Currie should to have returned the Glenriddell Manuscripts to Jean upon publication, but instead he kept them for himself. They passed through his family until his daughter-in-law presented them to the Liverpool Athenaeum Club in 1853. They remained there until the Club decided to auction them off in 1913.

However John Gribbel of Philadelphia who acquired the volumes, made the remarkable gesture to give them as a gift to the people of Scotland. He intended that they should go to a national library of Scotland. As no such body existed then, it was decided that they would alternate every five years between the Mitchell Library Glasgow, and the City Chamberlain's Office Edinburgh until such time as a National library was established.

 

Following the opening of the National Library of Scotland in 1925, the manuscripts were formerly handed over to the new institution in June 1926. On learning that they had found their permanent home, Gribbel wrote "If anything were necessary to complete the satisfaction I had in sending the manuscripts to Scotland, the institution of the Library would supply it".

 

Importance of the Glenriddell Manuscripts to current collecting

In the Glenriddell Manuscripts, Burns appears not just as a poet, but as a self-editor. The two volumes of poems, songs and letters contain his reflections, how he revised and reconsidered his writing. These manuscripts capture the circumstances of how they were made, from friendship and collaboration to the breakdown that interrupted their completion.

They offer a personal way into Burns’s world, inviting readers to explore further and encounter his work as he chose to present it.

Edina, THE NEW WORLD

 

Edina Lochenbooths high st

THE NEW WORLD - Life in Edinburgh 1700s 

A city of taverns, turnpike, steps, towering apartment blocks, theatre, dancing assemblies, city chambers and strong gusts of wind. The row of towers rising from the palace to a castle on the rock- some 12 storeys high were crowded. Seen from the wide views out along the shores of the Firth of Forth there were garlands of wood and peat smoke round the town which gave rise to the name Auld Reekie. And the wynds and closes ran down to the waters of the north loch or to the Canongate. From the lawn market, the Royal mile opens out near St Giles to be wide enough for five carriages, and then narrowed down to the Canongate, down towards Holyrood palace and Arthurs seats.

 

There was the Jacobite/ Whig divide. There were 2 thrice weekly newspapers – one Whig, one Jacobite; and The Scots Magazine – full of trails, poetry, world affairs, narrative of Scots; 4 printing works, brewers, insurance, 9 Presbyterian churches. Musselburgh fish wives, sweeps, coal porters, barefoot housemaids. Women wore scarlet plaid or tartan over their heads down to their waist. There were 600 taverns, where work took place and people drank ale, claret and whisky.  There was archery for Jacobites, at Musselburgh. Golf for the Whigs at Leith links.

There was a weekly concert at St Marys chapel Cowgate. The women sang old songs and held tea parties. A well-dressed duchess appeared from a dirty close. it was the Duchess of Gordon, the leader of Edinburgh society, was once seen riding up the high street on a sow, which her sister drove with a stick!

Georgian New Town built late 1700s

The heart of Edinburgh was at St Giles cathedral since the abolition of the bishops during the Reformation – there was the new church choir, old church nave, Haddow Holes northwest corner, Tolbooth west. The General Assembly met here once a year.  

At the Luckenbooths near St Giles were shops – on the East side was the flat of poet Allan Ramsay senior who established the first library 1725 and in the ground floor flat was the printer, William Creech. And on the west side were the dark turrets of the Old Tolbooth prison. At the back of St Giles, there was the Parliament house where the Scottish Parliament sat from 1639. The Edinburgh town council sat at Parliament Close.

From Edinburgh there were 3 mail coaches to London each week. A stagecoach ran monthly to London and took 10 days on the road. There were ships to London – from the Port of Leith. Edinburgh did not have the colonial trade with the Americas or a merchant class, that Glasgow had - but the town had lawyers, Court of Session, clergymen, General Assembly. 

 

There was intellectual infrastructure, reading societies, libraries, periodicals, museums and masonic lodges. The Edinburgh College (university) – William Castares, who’d been in Dutch exile before 1688 revolution. In 1708 introduced a system of professors – new chairs in Arts, Law. The Edinburgh Faculty of Medicine, founded in 1726 was the first in Britain. Jacobite printers Thomas and Walter Ruddima produced editions of Scots Renaissance writers such as George Buchannan and Gavin Douglas. They also expanded the Advocates library at Parliament House 1680 to over 2 thousand volumes. The Academy of Painting opened in 1729. The High school was one of the largest grammar schools with 400 pupils – plus 4 hospitals or boarding schools for orphans – George Heriots for boys and George Watson for girls in 1659.The Royal Infirmary was founded in 1741. 

Scottish Writers museum

Baxters Close