The Edinburgh Festival - A Biography

David Pollock

Summary

True, the city's many summer festivals each maintain their own identities. And yet 'The Festival' has stuck as a shorthand which captures the truly eclectic experience of 'doing Edinburgh' which has made the city's very name synonymous with world-leading culture and performance.
This book is the first to tell the complete history of the Edinburgh Festival. Arts writer David Pollock paints an extraordinary portrait of the growth, glory years and struggles of this global cultural phenomenon. He introduces a wide cast of key individuals and shows, including Fleabag, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, Billy Connolly, Emma Thompson, Stephen Fry, Joseph Beuys, The Fall and Six The Musical.
The Edinburgh Festival: A Biography provides a unique perspective on the social and cultural history of Scotland and its capital in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. It will delight and intrigue all who have experience of the greatest festival in the world.

Available since: 08/01/2022.

Print length: 512 pages.

The Arts

Other books that might interest you

A Futile and Stupid Gesture -...

Josh Karp

This ultimate biography of National Lampoon and its cofounder Doug Kenney offers the first complete history of the immensely popular magazine and its brilliant and eccentric characters. Relying on wonderful stories about the comedy scene in New York City in the 1970s and National Lampoon's place at the center of it, author Josh Karp chronicles how the magazine spawned a popular radio show and two long-running theatrical productions that helped launch the careers of John Belushi, Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, and Gilda Radner and that went on to inspire Saturday Night Live. That history along with interviews conducted with more than 130 people connected to Kenney and the magazine-including Chevy Chase, John Hughes, P. J. O'Rourke, Tony Hendra, Sean Kelly, Chris Miller, and Bruce McCall-and behind-the-scenes stories about the making of Animal House and Caddyshack help to capture the nostalgia, humor, and popular culture that National Lampoon still inspires.

Show book

One Perfect Rose

Elizabeth Garry

The early history of Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy reveals her devotion to her political father, Honey Fitz, and the love story that developed with Joseph Kennedy, before her debut at eighteen. This play presents years of research by Elizabeth Gerry that reflects the strong moral conviction and spiritual influence of the Kennedy matriarch upon the lives and politics of her children and grandchildren.Starring: Jeanette Nolan as Rose Kennedy, William Windom as Joseph Kennedy, Sr., Sean McClory as John Fitzgerald, Shay Duffin as The Irish Journalist, Kathleen Freeman as Mary Fitzgerald, Elliott Reid as John F. Kennedy, Linda Henning as Rosemary  Kennedy, Eddie Firestone as Robert Kennedy, Ashby Adams as Joe Jr. and Edward Kennedy, Dawn Bender as Kathleen Kennedy, Whitney Dickinson as Young John F. Kennedy, Ian Dickinson as Young Joe Kennedy, Jr., and CART's Announcer John Harlan.Produced, directed, and adapted by Peggy Webber.

Show book

Abbott and Costello: Hertz You...

Bud Abbott, Lou Costello

Lou has a date with Tessie Tinfoil, but first, he visits the barber and a dance studio. Costello loses his place in the script and tries unsuccessfully to tell a joke.

Show book

Queens of Comedy - The Women Who...

Evergreen

Once women like Phyllis Diller, Jean Carroll, and Moms Mabley took the stage, their impact changed the face of stand-up comedy forever. Listen in as Evergreen breaks down the comedic stylings of some of the funniest women in the world in this curated collection, available for the first time in audio.

Show book

British Violin Makers

M. Meredith Morris

This adaptable instrument's origins date back centuries. Celtic legends amuse us with mystical stories describing the creation of stringed music, but practical history recounts that the modern birth of the violin occurred in Italy as early as the sixteenth century. The skilled craft of hand production was renowned in France as well, but it is the British classic type and its history that W. Meredith Morris writes about in British Violin Makers .This classic, comprehensive reference to violin making, reprinted in 1920, features a biographical dictionary of craftsmen, along with many of their signatures and marks. Twenty-six photographs of selected makers and their instruments help place the contemporary reader in the style of the period. Reverend Morris's second editionimproves upon the first 1904 edition by adding more than 150 names to the list of makers who produced six violins or more. A new foreword by music scholar Benjamin Hebbert explains the important role British violin makers played in the development of the instrument.From Morris's narrative, one gets a feel for the importance of the craftsman and his materials. He explains the various types of wood and varnish used, and how they, along with the arch and contour, work together to produce a specific tone. Speaking with fervor, the way a wine connoisseur does when describing a certain vintage, Morris compares and contrasts the quality of British instruments to that of other nations.

Show book

Lanford Wilson's Women: Three...

Lanford Wilson

The Great Nebula in Orion
The Great Nebula in Orion centers on the accidental reunion of two mature women who went to college together. Louise (Stephanie Gordon) is a successful New York fashion designer who lives in an apartment overlooking the Hayden Planetarium. She has run into Carrie (Tanya Berezin) in Bergdorf's on a shopping trip from her home in Boston. Carry has married into the upper 2 percent, firmly entrenched in a life of social perquisites; but the site of the planetarium takes her back to an almost forgotten romance with a young dreamer who introduced her to the majestic mysteries of the constellations in the night sky. As these two catch up on the intervening years, secrets are revealed that shake the complacency of the present, with tumultuous passions buried in the past.
Ludlow Fair
In a turn of comedic mastery, Ludlow Fair treats us to the tribulations of two mismatched young women sharing an apartment. Rachel (Trish Hawkins) has turned in her recent boyfriend, Joe, for making off with her savings and now wonders if she's done the right thing. Her contrasting roommate is cynical Agnes (Conchata Ferrell), who reminds Rachel of the dizzying history of young men the pretty girl has run through before falling prey to a hunk who's ripped her off. While Rachel stews over her moral dilemma, Agnes is preparing for bed, fighting off a cold, and hoping for a threadbare romantic lunch with her boss' skinny son. All Rachel wants is to be assured things will be better tomorrow, but Agnes shoots that down: It will be exactly the same tomorrow. The bittersweet contrast between these young ladies is heartbreakingly funny.
The Moonshot Tape
The Moonshot Tape lets us listen to Diane (Judith Ivey), a famous short-story writer, revisiting her Midwestern hometown. She is being interviewed by a local girl writing for the high school paper. Diane is staying in a motel near a hospital where her mother is waiting to transfer to a nursing home. The young journalist's questions, although naïve, pierce Diane's sophisticated style and, with the aid of a little vodka, unleash memories that are at the foundations of her identity. She decides to answer the girl's questions as honestly as possible. The result is a reliving of experiences that shock and devastate the listener as we journey into a tormented past.
Together these three one-acts demonstrate the power and skill of a writer who understands the complex issues faced by women and has used his talent to create these unforgettable portraits. The actors are the original cast members who premiered these plays at the Circle Repertory Company, and this recording captures their electrifying performances.

"You'll always remember these women as intimate revelations of the human spirit." (Marshall W. Mason, founding artistic director of Circle Rep)

Show book