Festival fever

Sally Toms enters into the spirit of the Edinburgh festival. All of them

As this issue went to press, Edinburgh was a buzzing with festival spirit.

Every year, the city flings open its gates and welcomes hundreds of thousands of visitors to revel in art, music, comedy and all kinds of entertainment from around the world. The city is absolutely taken over and its population literally doubles in size.

Yes, residents complain that it's all a bit invasive, visitors can never find a hotel room and there's too much going on to know where to start, but it is something everyone should experience.

In fact it is not one festival, but a collection of festivals happening in the city at the same time (from late July into early September) including the Edinburgh International Festival; the Edinburgh Fringe Festival; the Edinburgh Military Tattoo; the Edinburgh International Film Festival; the Edinburgh International Book Festival; the Festival of Politics; Festival of Spirituality and Peace and so on… It matters little to the festivalgoer which events are part of which festival, except that each festival has a separate programme (and website) and sells tickets only for its own events.

It was all started with the first Edinburgh International Festival (EIF) in 1947 – a beacon of optimism in the depressing post-war years. Afew theatre groups were so optimistic they gatecrashed the festival and the Fringe was born in the same year.

Sixty years later these two festivals carry on side by side, complementing each other by each catering for different side of ...

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• By : Sally Toms
• In : Editor's View
• Issue : 34
• Page : 3
• Words : 611