EIBF Challenges us 2026

 

This years EIBF theme is "Changing your Mind"  It’s a profound and wide ranging question – how do we find common ground – commonality? If one side uses banal slogans that will not move any conversation forward.

A positive are festivals, which can bring diverse people together to have explorative, informed conversations. Reading books is one of the best ways to understand different experiences, to learn empathy and expand horizons. 

Some excellent talks this year - Elif Shafak, AC Grayling, Colson Whitehead, Diana Galbaldon,

Plus 'Scotland of the World' –  with leading Scottish writers Ali Smith, Len Pennia, Kathleen Jamie, William Dalrymple along with international musicians, artists and performers. At Greyfriars kirkyard.

 

Expanding horizons matters greatly to changing your mind. Some of us have long held and entrenched views of the world. It can be very challenging to change our views. Some of us older folks view the world through an out-dated lens – stuck in the 80s or 50s. We must listen to younger people, or the wise academic, or pay attention to the arts. Creative people often hold deep insights.

 

Try to look at the world through a wider lens. Ignorance can hold us back and we must be open-minded to new ideas, to new conversations and to new perspectives, and to different cultures.

And on the subject of Scotland’s Self determination – this is about how we can improve democracy and better media for Scotland - and not about nationality or being British or Scottish.

As the sun goes down on the festivals for 2026, I’m always filled with a sense of loss and nostalgia – over the many unforgettable and fun times I’ve enjoyed here Edina over the past twenty years. The performers, press and organisers are all packing up, a little exhausted now but also inspired.

 

HOPE!!

According to a new poll – festivals offer people hope.

Elif Shafak

AC Grayling

Alexander McColl Smith

Almost 600 writers from 41 countries gathered in Edinburgh 15–30 August to present 600 events spanning fiction, politics, science, history, music, and live performance in a 16-day curated programme.

At a time of intense polarisation and entrenched positions, our 2026 theme Changing Your Mind invited audiences to stay open and curious, championing deep listening and celebrating our capacity to evolve our thinking, informed by a range of reliable experts and diverse perspectives. The Book festival curated a programme of voices, experts, and ideas, to create space for informed, nuanced public conversation, and encouraged new and alternative thinking - a much-needed alternative to debate driven by reaction and polarisation.

Major public figures included former Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, technology writer Cory Doctorow, best-selling author Michael Pollan, and award-winning poet Claudia Rankine, alongside leading writers from across the world. A landmark event of the bestselling writers of all time, John Grisham, and iconic Scottish crime writer Ian Rankin together on stage, crowning The Front List line-up at the McEwan Hall.

Other renowned fiction writers include Maggie O’Farrell, Ann Patchett, Ali Smith, Jenni Fagan, Colm Toíbín, Matt Haig, Louise Welsh, Nao-Cola Yamazaki, Candice Carty-Williams,Ben Lerner, and 2026 International Booker Prize winner Yáng Shuāng-zi

GrGREYFRIARS Kirk became a Book Festival venue, hosting Scotland to the World - a new series connecting leading Scottish writers Ali Smith, Len Pennie, Kathleen Jamie, and William Dalrymple with international musicians, artists and performers.· 

Diana Gabaldon

**EIBF TALKS 2026

Jimmy Wales   18^th august  -    The Seven Rules of Trust

As trust in billionaire-owned social media platforms continues to plummet, it’s astonishing to see how crowd-sourced knowledge bank, Wikipedia – once a byword for dubious accuracy – has built up its readers’ faith to become one of the internet’s most clear-sighted information sources. Maintaining confidence in a landscape of untruths is important to Wikipedia’s legendary founder Jimmy Wales. We’re thrilled to welcome this key figure of the online age to discuss his book The Seven Rules of Trust. Chaired by Heather Parry. 

 

Colson Whitehead – Forntlist – 21 August  -  Cool Machine

 is one of America’s most skilled and essential storytellers, holding the horrors of history in one hand and big-hearted humanity in the other. After consecutive Pulitzer Prize-winners, The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys, he concludes his acclaimed Harlem trilogy with Cool Machine: a portrait of hustle in 1980s New York. Join Whitehead, who is uniquely qualified to parse America’s past and present, for an energising conversation on why we can’t move forward without looking back. Chaired by Samira Ahmed.

 

Oliver Bullough, Everybody Loves our Dollars

24^th August 2026    Venue T   5pm

Following his oligarch-busting Butler to the World, Oliver Bullough returns to hang the world’s dirty money out to dry. In Everybody Loves Our Dollars, Bullough suggests there’s never been a better time to be a criminal in the UK. Moving and hiding money couldn’t be easier, and despite efforts to legislate, it’s estimated as much as 5% of world GDP is on the grubbier side. This revelatory conversation brings a murky underworld into razor-sharp focus. Chaired by Paul French.

25^th August 2026, Kirsty Gunn, Alan Riach, and James Robertson: Scotland 1926

100 years ago, Scottish literature was crackling with new energy. In this lively panel chat, Kirsty Gunn, Alan Riach, and James Robertson revisit the Scottish Renaissance through landmark works including Hugh MacDiarmid’s A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle, the early work of Neil M Gunn (newly reissued this year), and other under-sung voices including Willa Muir and Helen Cruickshank. Deep dive into a remarkable literary moment and the writers who helped reshape Scotland’s imaginative life. Chaired by Linden Bicket. 

 

AC Grayling: For the People - 25^th August 

The great British philosopher and academic A C Grayling’s appearances are always an intellectual highlight of the Book Festival, as he turns his forensic, yet empathetic, gaze upon defining issues of our time. This year, Grayling addresses the urgent theme of his new book, For the People, exploring how the forces of authoritarianism, election interference, and loss of faith in our institutions threaten the collapse of democracy, while offering bold suggestions for its survival.

 

Jeremy Hunt: Can we be great again

A major figure in the previous Conservative UK Government, Jeremy Hunt has served as Chancellor and Foreign Secretary, and led the Culture and (controversial) Health briefs. His Can We Be Great Again? is a timely read in a world of shifting geopolitical faultlines. Rebutting the idea that the UK is in inevitable decline on the international stage, join Hunt as he sets out a new take on how our influence can be used to positively affect global democracy, migration, trade, and climate. Chaired by Peter MacMahon. 

 

28^th August 2026 – 3.15

Colm Tóibín – author of 12 books including the multi-award-winning Brooklyn – is one of modern Ireland’s greatest writers. He talks with Chris Power about his breathtaking new story collection, The News from Dublin, exploring the lives of those living far from home: from Galway to Barcelona, Enniscorthy to San Francisco, and beyond. This promises to be an illuminating conversation with a true master of the craft.

 “Our theme 'Changing Your Mind' speaks to the moment we're in. At a time when opinions seem increasingly polarised and online debate is so divisive, we're creating space for thoughtful, nuanced conversations - exploring the reasons for our increasing social and political divides, and how we might change each others' minds, or at least agree to disagree, more agreeably. We're also looking at the potential of the human brain to adapt and relearn, and at the unparalleled power of stories to change our thinking.    Changing your mind is a lifelong process of staying open to new ideas. By bringing amazing speakers and curious audiences together, around knowledge and perspectives that help us challenge our assumptions and see the world differently, we hope the Festival programme this year will help us gain a deeper understanding of both ourselves and each other.”   Director, Jenny Niven

Nile Rodgers

I have a great memory back in 2012, American legend musician of disco and awesome riffs – who has worked on songs for David Bowie, Diana Ross and more – 'Nile Rodgers' gave such an entertaining impromptu talk at the EIBF Spiegel tent one evening, after his book festival talk that day.  

Lost for 200 years, the Raeburn BURNS painting

 

Henry Raeburn’s lost portrait returns to Edinburgh

On 31 March 2025, a previously unknown painting of Robert Burns appeared at Wimbledon Auctions London, described as being in the ‘manner of Sir Henry Raeburn’. Estimated at £300-500, the painting was secured by £68,000 by William Zachs, a Burns scholar and director Blackie House Library and Museum Edinburgh. After a careful restoration at the Simon Gillespie Studio in London, it was brought back to Scotland. 

 

The painting’s attribution to Raeburn has been carefully assessed by several experts: James Holloway, former Director of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery; Dr Duncan Thomson, former Keeper of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery; Helen Smailes, Senior Curator of British Art at the National Galleries of Scotland; Lesley Stevenson, Senior Paintings Conservator at the National Galleries of Scotland; and Dr Bendor Grosvenor, art historian.

 

While the composition corresponds to Nasmyth’s original, this work is more than a simple copy. The painting is significantly larger than Nasmyth’s. Thomson noted ‘that wonderful freshness of observation that marks Raeburn’s work at its best.’ 

Stevenson has studied works by Raeburn in Scottish and American collections: ‘Raeburn’s expressive, seemingly effortless brushwork, the characteristic warm palette, soft, atmospheric lighting and sensitive rendering of the instantly recognisable Robert Burns’. “The subtle interplay of shadows and brilliant highlights resonates with Raeburn’s finest works. The background has changed, as has the format of the picture which is now contained by the rectangular edges of the canvas rather than a feigned oval.” 

 

HISTORY

Cadell & Davies stopped trading in 1840 and their archive was dispersed. Documentary evidence became available over subsequent years. Another letter among their papers contained crucial information:

Edinr 14th Novr 1803 -  Gentlemen

According to your order, transmitted to me by Mr Cunningham, I have finished a copy of Burns the poet, from the original portrait painted by Mr Nasmyth. I have shown it to Mr Cunningham, who thinks it very like him, and I hope it will also meet with your approbation. I am ready to send it whenever you please to order me.

[...] I am, 

Gentlemen, your most obedient servant,

Henry Raeburn

 

Here was the evidence that Raeburn’s portrait of Burns, painted seven years after the poet’s death, was based on the original by Alexander Nasmyth (1758–1840), the definitive image by which Scotland’s ‘heaven-taught ploughman’ is remembered. It was commissioned by the Edinburgh bookseller William Creech to be engraved by John Beugo as the frontispiece for the second published edition of Burns’s poems in 1787. 

 

Burns gave several sittings to Nasmyth and the two became friends. They were of a similar age and shared politically radical leanings. Nasmyth’s portrait spread across the world, through engravings, sculptures, painted copies and countless modes of reproduction from shortbread tins to stamps and even Coca Cola bottles. It has been one of the stars of the national collection ever since it was presented to the National Gallery of Scotland (today’s National) in 1872 By William Nicol Burns.

 

Lawyer Alexander Cunningham (1763─1812), and friend of Burns and patron of Raeburn, secured the commission for Raeburn. During his stay in Edinburgh 1786, Burns formed a friendship with Cunningham. Burns called for him on his deathbed. Cunningham spearheaded a fundraising campaign in support of Burns’s widow. He made the portrait accessible to Raeburn for copying. Another letter, now in the collection of William Zachs, Blackie house library and Museum confirms that the Nasmyth portrait was with Cunningham in Edinburgh in 1803. 

 

The differences William Angus observed between Fry’s engraving and Nasmyth’s portrait are here resolved. -   Raeburn looking at Nasmyth looking at Burns

 

Sir Henry Raeburn, Robert Burns (1759–1796), after Alexander Nasmyth, 1803, Collection of William Zachs, Blackie House Library and Museum, Edinburgh

II  What does Henry Raeburn’s painting tell us about Robert Burns?  Professor Alan Riach  The rediscovered now famous painting by Henry Raeburn was unveiled at the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum in Alloway The painting was lost for 200 years and has been on public display since January the National Galleries Edinburgh.

It was found in a house clearance in Surrey, England, and auctioned in Wimbledon in March 2025, starting price of £300-£500. The winning bid was £68,000. Its purchase was a triumph. Dr William Zachs, director of Blackie House Library and Museum in Edinburgh and long-term Burns scholar and enthusiast, was aware of its potential provenance, realising that it might just possibly be the portrait he had heard about which had been missing for centuries. Experts later confirmed that it is the lost Raeburn portrait.

 

It was commissioned 1803 for 20 guineas by the publishers Cadell & Davies, and was based on the portrait by Alexander Nasmyth, the most famous image of Burns. Burns himself sat for Nasmyth’s portrait. So Raeburn’s work was not from life, and yet the life that breathes out of the painting is immediately palpable. The light comes out of the paint.

 It was intended that Raeburn’s portrait should be the source of an engraving which could then be used as an illustration in future editions of Burns’s works, so it was sent from Edinburgh to London but thereafter dropped from sight. Lovers and scholars of both Burns and Raeburn had been scratching their heads across generations, worrying about where it could have gone)

 Bill Zachs’s munificence and his enlightened purpose is at the heart of the painting’s new history. It’s currently at the museum in Alloway thanks to the National Trust for Scotland. The intention is to take it on tour, to make it available to be seen across Scotland and internationally.

 

Perhaps there are only two ways to support the health of a nation’s culture – one is the provision of government. For that, you need enlightened politicians who really know the value of the arts.

Such people are thin on the ground in Scotland but this is the established way of most European countries, so here’s an example, loud and clear, of the value of the NTS.

 

III    ALAN RIACH

“I wasn’t quite ready for the power of its presence. Raeburn’s portrait of Burns has its own story of rediscovery and recovery for Scotland, but what does the painting itself say to us now, for its human immediacy? What makes it a great painting, what does it tell us about Burns that we don’t already know? 

 

The other is the work of enlightened, insightful and socially minded benefactors. Dr Duncan Thomson, former keeper of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and curator of the last major Raeburn exhibition at the National Galleries, in 1997: “It is more than likely that Raeburn had seen Burns in his heyday in Edinburgh … and had observed that glowing eye that had so impressed the young Walter Scott. The result is a portrait that speaks in an entirely new way of the warmth, the sensuality and the profound intelligence that we find in Burns’s poetry.”

 

Alan Riach writes - “What does the painting capture and show us, that makes it so special? Why do we call Raeburn a great artist, and not so much Nasmyth? Give Nasmyth his due. His paintings are fine work and invaluable in their own ways. His documentation of the poet’s face and features and the landscape beyond him are vital records and meaningful evocations. But when I stand and look at the Raeburn, something else is happening.

 

It's ultimately about the potential of life itself, human vulnerability, the power living gives us, what it is to be alive, and what is lost when that gift is broken, squandered, or cut short. This is an understanding great art provides, and great tragic art, above all. It’s all about how we find value. Raeburn’s portrait of Burns is tragic in a way that Nasmyth’s is not. It is profoundly alive, speaking of an individual’s life and that person’s landscape, history and primal capacity for life, which our knowledge of Burns’s biography informs us was so badly curtailed.

 

In that regard, Burns is in good company. His fellow writers Robert Louis Stevenson dead at 44; Robert Fergusson dead at 24; or Lewis Grassic Gibbon, James Leslie Mitchell, dead at 33. Lives of lost potential, each of them. When I look at Raeburn’s Burns, something of the sorrow of that is present. And then, thinking of what might have led to his death, what dark currents start to swirl? Conspiracies of the establishment to cloud and collude against a political threat, a man whose work exemplified independent thinking?

 

 

Writing after the death of Leslie Mitchell to his widow Rhea from his home in Shetland on April 14, 1935, Hugh MacDiarmid said: “It is impossible in circumstances like yours to say or do anything that does not seem horribly helpless and irrelevant.

“I agree with all you say about the wanton cruelty and utter senselessness of such a bereavement – and personally I can accept that; it squares with my irrationalist philosophy of life – but what I do find absolutely appalling and unendurable is not that ultimate meaninglessness from any human standpoint, but the fact that within our human scheme of things it should be added to by readily preventable ills which are in so many ways still more immediately torturing and terrible. However brutally and unintelligibly the blind forces of nature cut across all that seems decent and reasonable, there is no earthly reason why to such unspeakable outrages on human sensibility should be added economic jeopardies and humiliation, and obligations of drudgery and anxiety superimposed on an irreparable loss.

 

“The latter – the thrust-back of the helpless victims into toil and need, and the intolerable savaging and neutralising of the best human hopes and efforts – is perfectly avoidable.

“In other words, I can face up to the unhuman cosmic course of things and have no religious belief of any sort or any consolation derived from a philosophy that relies on an ultimate good in any human sense of the term; but every fibre of my being protests to the uttermost against the needless degradations and difficulties that arise from a remediable economic system.”

How these words might apply to the writers I’ve named and to many others closer to our time, I need not elaborate, but simply indicate the hard truths that lie behind them, and the courage it takes to face up to them.

 

 

 

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.

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