Edinburgh and its Festivals: The Origins and Development of a Festival City
- Jonathan Gunson
- 3 days ago
- 17 min read
Updated: 1 day ago
Introduction
Edinburgh, the festival city. For one month of the year, the Scottish capital transforms from a historic city filled with businesses and students, to a city teeming with artists and performers. On the streets, in the squares, across pubs and churches and, it seems, in almost any vacant and available space, a city of performance quickly rises – its population, by some estimates, doubling – before being quickly dismantled again less than one month later. This piece shall look at the festivals held in Edinburgh in August, providing a brief historical overview of where they came from, focusing on their early years from 1947 through the 1950s. It will then briefly outline where it went from there, including a brief outline of other festivals in Edinburgh, up to the present day.
The Beginnings
The Edinburgh International Festival (EIF) was established in 1947 as part of a means to revive and rebuild the cultural scene in Europe following the destruction of World War II. It has, over the course of its history, featured an extraordinary number of performers known worldwide, and has hosted numerous world premieres. It was intended as a prestigious event which showcased high culture and included performances from renowned artists, musicians, and theatre companies. It had the ambition of showcasing classical music, opera, ballet, and theatre to an international audience and restoring a sense of cultural pride and international cooperation through the arts. Given the context of the world following the destruction brought about by war, the festival was also aimed at using culture for the purpose of reconciliation and cooperation, to reunite Europe following the war (University of Glasgow, n.d.). As the Edinburgh International Festival (n.d., para 1) states, “after the devastation of World War II, the founding vision for the Edinburgh International Festival was to reunite people through great art. In that first year, people overcame the post-war darkness, division and austerity in a blooming of festival spirit”. The main partners were Edinburgh Corporation, the council of what was then a city with little reputation for promoting the arts, and the Arts Council of Great Britain (ACGB), which had been established in London to support the culture of the ‘high arts’ of opera, drama, classical music, and ballet (Attala, 2019).
The first Artistic Director of the Edinburgh International Festival was Rudolf Bing. Prestigious companies, including the Glyndebourne Opera, the Hallé Orchestra, and Sadler’s Wells Ballet, were invited. It quickly established itself as a high-profile event of world-class, prestigious, and curated performances of classical music, opera, ballet, and theatre. As the Edinburgh International Festival (n.d., para 4) comments, Bing, Falconer, the City of Edinburgh Council, and the British Council “wanted to reconcile people after the war, to let great art refresh souls and transcend all political and cultural boundaries.”
Bing was the General Manager of Glyndebourne, and the idea for such a festival first came to him in 1943 (King, 2018). One charming story is that this happened on a starry night in 1942, when Bing and the soprano Audrey Mildmay were walking down Princes Street in Edinburgh following a performance of The Beggar’s Opera by John Gay and, with Edinburgh Castle bathed in moonlight, Mildmay had commented that the city would be a wonderful setting for a festival (Edinburgh International Festival n.d.). The reality is that Bing was in fact looking for a solution to the wartime financial pressures at Glyndebourne (Edinburgh International Festival n.d.). Originally from Austria, Bing had fled Nazi Germany in 1934, and given that Glyndebourne was then in need of further funding, his idea was to host a music festival in association with it (King, 2018). His original plan was to hold it in Oxford, but when that fell through, he began looking at other cities in 1944 (King, 2018). Locations were looked at which had the required scale for such an endeavour, and also the distance from London that they were less likely to have suffered the devastation which some other cities of similar scale had faced during the bombings (Behr, 2017a; 2017b). One report suggests that Bing had become convinced that, given the devastation across European cities, musical and operatic festivals were unlikely to re-emerge on anything like the pre-war scale, and so the possibility of looking for a festival space in the UK should be investigated (Bruce, 1975). Bing was persuaded of the suitability of Edinburgh by another key figure, Henry Harvey Wood (Attala, 2019). He worked for the British Council, was based in Edinburgh, and was supported by figures such as Sir John Falconer, the Lord Provost, and Lady Rosebery (Attala, 2019; King, 2018). Such a town or city for such a festival should be of reasonable size, capable of absorbing large numbers of people for three weeks to a month, be scenic and picturesque, be in a country likely to attract tourists and foreign visitors, and should have a sufficient number of theatres, concert halls, and open spaces, as well as the willingness to host such a festival. As a result of being perceived to meet all of these criteria, Edinburgh was recommended by Wood (Bruce, 1975). A festival committee was formed in 1945. On Saturday 24th November 1945, the plan for the festival was announced in The Scotsman and the Evening Dispatch (Edinburgh International Festival, nd.). The City Council ultimately agreed in September 1946 to a three-week festival, running from the 24th August to the 13th September 1947, and voted for a £20,000 guarantee fund alongside equivalent sums from the Arts Council and private citizens, deciding on a two year guarantee, dependent on £40,000 being raised from other sources (Attala, 2019; King, 2018; Miller, 1996).
The logistics of the festival raised considerable concerns, as large numbers of visitors arrived in the city. Hotels, hostels, and student residencies were all used, as well as a further 6000 beds provided by private households (King, 2018). Venues included the Usher Hall, which was owned by the Council, but other spaces were not as suitable (Attala; 2019; King, 2018). The Assembly Rooms in George Street was the base of the Festival Club, which was manned by volunteers and prepared and cooked 2500 meals every day for visitors, and the Festival Society liaised with the Ministry of Food to make sure that there was a sufficient supply of ingredients (Attala, 2019; Edinburgh International Festival, n.d.; King, 2018; Miller, 1996). As rations were still in place in 1947, the Minister for Fuel and Power banned floodlighting the castle at the first festival, but the people of Edinburgh wrote letters and telegrams, offering to donate coal rations so that the castle could be seen, floodlit, at night, and the Minister relented; this meant the castle was lit up from the private coal rations of Edinburgh for four nights, from dusk until midnight, during the festival (Edinburgh International Festival, n.d.). Other problems were uniquely Scottish. There were concerns that the programme did not include enough music by Scottish artists (Attala, 2019). There were also issues pertaining to the important place held by the Church of Scotland: a High Mass was suggested for St Giles’ Cathedral, which was viewed as completely unacceptable for a Presbyterian building in the city of John Knox (Attala, 2019; King, 2018; Miller, 1996).
As previously mentioned, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, the Hallé Orchestra, and Sadlers Wells Ballet all took part. In terms of theatre, The Taming of The Shrew and Moliere’s L’Ecole des Femmes were performed. Glyndebourne put on opera at the King’s Theatre, and the Royal Scottish Academy extended its summer exhibition of Vuillard (King, 2018). There were also pipes and dancing on the esplanade of Edinburgh Castle, which would later increase exponentially in scale to become the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo (King, 2018). A further important event took place in the form of a weeklong film festival, also in 1947, which was organised by the Edinburgh Film Guild; this would ultimately become the Edinburgh International Film Festival (King, 2018). The inaugural Edinburgh International Festival of 1947 was a commercial success (Attala, 2019; Miller, 1996).
Whilst the early EIF was mostly associated with high arts, there were other early developments. In 1960, the then Artistic Director of the Edinburgh International Festival, Robert Ponsonby, invited a quartet of young performers – Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Alan Bennett, and Jonathan Miller – to the EIF, who appeared in their (now famous) show, Beyond the Fringe (University of Glasgow, n.d.). The EIF had brought Flanders and Swann to the festival in 1959, and the bringing of Beyond the Fringe can be seen as the forerunner to the boom of satire in the 1960s (King, 2018). This was an important early development, moving the EIF beyond purely high arts into revue, which might be considered more the realms of the Fringe, at least at the time – as the title of the piece gives a nod to. This was a period of significant social and policy change, where the arts were a focal point, and the distinction between Festival and Fringe performances was becoming harder to distinguish, in the context of conversations regarding what art actually was and what purpose it served (Bartia, 2017).
Another such event that occurred in 1963 was the Writers’ Conference, including those associated with the Fringe, followed by a Drama Conference in 1963, bringing together an array of international writers, and with it a debate between Scottish nationalism and on the one hand and internationalism on the other (Attala, 2019; King, 2018). This was still in the age of censorship and public decency laws, and is remembered for an incident where, as part of a theatrical sequence or “Happening” organised by Kenneth Dewey, an avant-garde director from Los Angeles, a naked female model was wheeled across the organ gallery in the McEwan Hall (King, 2018). This caused outrage from the Church of Scotland and in the local press (Attala, 2019). John Calder, who organised both the Writers’ and Drama conferences, and the model were both prosecuted for indecency (King, 2018).
A further important development for the EIF came in 1965 when the then artistic director, George Lascelles, 7th Earl of Harewood, formed the Scottish Festival Chorus, later to be named the Edinburgh Festival Chorus, and consisting entirely of amateurs, with the debut performance being of Mahler’s 8th Symphony (King, 2018).
Alongside the EIF, eight theatre companies who had not been invited arrived and also performed in spaces across the city. This would become the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the focus of the next section.
The Fringe
"Round the fringe of official Festival drama, there seems to be more private enterprise than before ... I am afraid some of us are not going to be at home during the evenings!"
(Kemp, 1948)
The curated, more ‘high-brow’ approach of the EIF was, however, seen as elitist and exclusive by some artists of the theatre. In 1947, the same year as the first EIF, a group of performers, who had not been invited to the main EIF, decided to stage their own performances outside of the official festival – on the fringes of the city, as well as at Dunfermline Abbey. Thus, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe came into being. The Fringe did not rival the EIF. Rather, marked by its spontaneity, independence, and experimentation, it offered a countercultural alternative, less embedded in the high arts, with participating artists seeing themselves as less bourgeois (Moffat, 1978), and without curatorial oversight – an open-access model which remains in place to this day. This means that anyone with a show can register and perform, and there is no central curator or selection committee. One group in particular, the Glasgow Unity Theatre, objected to the expensive Festival prices and lack of Scottish material at the EIF (Bartie, 2013; Bartie, 2017).
The cultural world of post-war Scotland had a thriving scene of community and touring drama, of a good standard. Whilst poorly funded, there was great enthusiasm behind these groups, and so they decided to perform in the city at the same time as the EIF (Dale, 1988). A total of eight theatre companies, mostly local amateur productions, performed uninvited (University of Glasgow, n.d.). They had not been invited by Bing to the main EIF, and were not all Scottish – six were from Scotland, two from England – but came nonetheless, although it is not necessarily likely that they intended to establish an event of their own, or had even been in contact with each other prior to this (Moffat, 1978). The groups initially referred to themselves as the “Festival Adjuncts” (University of Glasgow, n.d.), with the term ‘fringe’ first being coined in 1948 by the Scottish playwright and journalist, Robert Kemp (1948), in the Edinburgh Evening News on 14th August, 1948 (University of Glasgow, n.d.), in the quote referenced at the beginning of this section.
Those first eight groups were as follows (King, 2018):
Glasgow Unity Theatre (Gorky’s The Lower Depths and The Laird O’ Torwatletie by Robert MacLellan – both at the Pleasance)
Christine Orr Players of Edinburgh (Macbeth at the YMCA)
Edinburgh Peoples’ Theatre (Thunder Rock by Robert Ardley at the Pleasance)
Edinburgh District Community Drama Association (The Anatomist by James Bridie at the Pleasance)
Pilgrim Players (Eliot’s The Family Reunion and Murder in the Cathedral at Gateway Theatre along Leith Walk)
Edinburgh College of Art Theatre Group (Easter by Strindberg at the YMCA)
A series of short puppet plays (Manchester Marionette Theatre in the restaurant of the New Victoria Cinema in Clerk St., subsequently the Odeon)
A production of the morality play Everyman in Dunfermline Cathedral, sponsored by the Carnegie Trust.
The early Fringe of the late 1940s and early 1950s saw Fringe groups putting on their productions independently in small performance spaces such church halls, local community centres, the YMCA, and University buildings (University of Glasgow, n.d.). The Fringe was also drawing in a growing number of student theatre companies from Oxford, Cambridge, and London (University of Glasgow, n.d.). There was also a rival “People’s Festival” in 1951 (Bartia, 2017; Behr, 2017a; 2017b), set up by the Edinburgh Labour Festival Committee and consisting of left-wing representatives (Bartia, 2017). Whilst this was aimed towards internationalism and bringing the festival closer to the people (Bartia, 2017) and reacting against the perceived elitism of the main festival and the high arts (Behr, 2017a; 2017b), it did not last. It is indeed perhaps unlikely that such an overtly political festival would have lasted or grown to the scale and form of the current Fringe. It can, however, perhaps be seen in the context of the broader discussions surrounding an alternative festival, distinct from the main festival, at a time when artists were arriving in Edinburgh and performing independently of the festival, but not in an organised or coordinate form. Due to the lack of guarantees of standards in the Fringe, in 1952 it was decided the main festival would not incorporate it in the programme and thus aims for a separate festival was developed (Bartia, 2017). As mentioned, in the early years of the Fringe, groups operated independently of each other. However, in 1951, students from the University of Edinburgh opened a drop-in centre at 25 Haddington Place which could be used for cheap food and a bed (King, 2018). The first meeting regarding Fringe groups working together was held in 1954, focusing on the logistics and the establishment of a joint box office and publicity mechanisms (King, 2018).
In 1954, groups began to be advertised in the first Fringe programme and, also in this year, representatives of Fringe groups met at a conference with the ambition of establishing a committee, so that they could more officially work together (University of Glasgow, n.d.). The first Fringe programme was produced in this year by the Edinburgh printer, C. J. Cousland (King, 2018). A Box Office had been set up at the University’s Old College by 1954, and by 1959, the Festival Fringe Society had been established, which put together a full programme of events and helped visiting companies in areas such as venues, accommodation, publicity, and ticket sales (University of Glasgow, n.d.).
The Festival Fringe Society was set up in 1959, a constitution was drawn up, and the first president of the Society was Michael Imison of the Oxford Theatre Group (Fisher, 2012; King, 2018). By the time the first Fringe club, box office, and information bureau opened in the YMCA in South Andrew Street, there were already 19 groups at the Fringe (King, 2018). As the two respective festivals moved through the 1960s, there developed an increasingly co-operative relationship between the two festivals (Bartia, 2017).
In 1969, at which point there were 57 groups and 100 shows, the Festival Fringe Society was turned into a limited company, and public funding was sought for an office (King, 2018). In 1970, it was decided that the Fringe could not be run by committee, and John Milligan was appointed as administrator in 1971 (Dale, 1988; King, 2018). In 1973, the Fringe First Awards premiered for new plays, with Allen Wright, Arts Editor of The Scotsman, and Ian Thomon of the Fringe Publicity Department coming up with the idea in 1972 (King, 2018).
Over the course of the 1960s and 1970s, the Fringe continued to expand in scale, diversity, and visibility, becoming known for sometimes experimental, radical performances. Through the 1970s and 1980s, the scale of the Fringe increased and it became truly international, and developed a professionalisation. It was no longer a group of uninvited independent artists and groups doing their own thing; it was now an industry. During the 1980s, comedians such as Rowan Atkinson, Emma Thompson, Stephen Fry, and Hugh Laurie all made their breakthroughs at the Fringe.
It was during the 1980s that the first super-venues emerged in the form of Assembly Rooms, Pleasance, Gilded Balloon, and (now no longer existing) the Circuit (Dale, 1988; King, 2018). Edinburgh was first promoted as “The Festival City” in 1983, when the Edinburgh International Festival, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the Edinburgh Military Tattoo, and the Edinburgh International Film Festival joined together to promote it as such (Dale, 1988). It was also during the 1980s that Edinburgh’s Fringe became known for its comedy scene (Venables, 2017a). In 1992, computer-based booking systems were introduced (King, 2018), with a major crisis hitting the Fringe in 2008 when the computer system failed, resulting in enormous losses for the festival (King, 2018; Venables, 2017). The festival did, nonetheless, recover from this, but the sheer scale of the festival made such a failure all the more significant.
The next section shall provide a brief overview, including a timeline of their respective foundations, of the other festivals which take place in Edinburgh.
Broader Festivals in Edinburgh
There are, in addition to the Edinburgh International Festival, a number of other festivals which take place in Edinburgh, for the most part but not exclusively during August when the bulk of tourists are present for the festival rather than purely the city atmosphere and activities. These are, respectively, the Edinburgh International Film Festival, the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo, the Edinburgh International TV Festival, the Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival, the Edinburgh International Book Festival, and the Edinburgh Art Festival. The Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival takes place slightly earlier, in July. It is also worth including the Edinburgh Science Festival, also part of the landscape of Edinburgh festivals, although this is distinct in that it takes place over the Easter holidays. A summary of the timeline of the various festivals can be found in Table I.
Table I: Timeline of festivals in Edinburgh
Year | Festival | Comments |
1947 | Edinburgh International Festival | The original curated festival |
1947 | Edinburgh Festival Fringe | Unofficially begins alongside the Edinburgh International Festival with eight groups |
1947 | Edinburgh International Film Festival | Launched as part of the post-war arts drive, originally organised by the Edinburgh Film Guild |
1950 | Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo | A military tattoo on the castle esplanade, preceded in 1949 by Something About a Soldier at the Ross Bandstand in the Princes Street Gardens, and in 1947 by pipes and dancing on the castle esplanade |
1976 | Edinburgh International TV Festival | Industry-focused, MacTaggart Lecture |
1978 | Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival | Jazz and blues celebration |
1983 | Edinburgh International Book Festival | Literary and public discourse focus |
1989 | Edinburgh Science Festival | Science and technology – distinct from the other festivals, as held over the Easter holidays |
2004 | Edinburgh Art Festival | Visual arts |
Table I: Gunson, Jonathan (2025). Timeline of festivals in Edinburgh.
(Edinburgh Art Festival, n.d.; Edinburgh Festival Fringe, n.d.; Edinburgh International Book Festival, n.d.; Edinburgh International Festival, n.d.; Edinburgh International Film Festival, n.d.; Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival, n.d.; Edinburgh Science Festival, n.d.; Edinburgh TV Festival, n.d.; The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo, n.d.)
Conclusion
This piece has provided an overview of the background and history of Edinburgh as a festival city from the early beginnings and formation of its festival culture. Edinburgh remains one of the most exciting cities in the world to be a performing artist, or indeed anyone who cares about the arts, during August. It is a hub of activity, where every space is at a premium and becomes a potential arts space. Fringe artists have gone on to attain national and global significance. Further, the model of an open-access Fringe has inspired other global festivals, the most notable of which is probably the Adelaide Fringe and corresponding Adelaide Festival in Australia and also includes those such as the Amsterdam Fringe Festival and the Prague Fringe (Adelaide Festival, n.d.; Adelaide Fringe, n.d.; Amsterdam Fringe Festival, n.d.; Prague Fringe, n.d.). Fringe artists have gone on to attain national and global significance. By the 1990s, the Fringe had become, and remains, the largest festival of its kind in the world.
There are, however, serious and legitimate questions and concerns regarding how this continues – the needs of the festivals and those performing in, working for, and visiting the venues, versus the needs of the city residents; the costs of accommodation, in particular during August, which can drastically increase and become prohibitively expensive; the question over whether the festivals do really continue to provide the springboard and opportunity for new works that they arguably once did, or whether there are now other, smaller, better avenues to start out in the arts, and whether the festivals are now a luxury of those who already have some sort of established reputation or have financial resources to take part. These questions do not seem likely to go away, but rather provide a springboard into broader discussions surrounding cultural infrastructure and geography, and the best ways to succeed in the creative arts as a sector and a career.
Bibliographical References
Adelaide Festival (n.d.). Adelaide Festival. Retrieved September 27, 2025, from https://www.adelaidefestival.com.au
Adelaide Fringe (n.d.). Adelaide Festival. Retrieved September 27, 2025, from https://adelaidefringe.com.au
Amsterdam Fringe Festival (n.d.). Adelaide Festival. Retrieved September 27, 2025, from https://amsterdamfringefestival.nl/home-eng/
Attala, J. (2009). Performing the Festival - a study of the Edinburgh International Festival in the twenty-first century [PhD thesis, University of Glasgow]. Https://Theses.gla.ac.uk/3839/. https://theses.gla.ac.uk/3839/1/2012attalaphd1.pdf
Bain, A. (1996). The Fringe: 50 Years of the Greatest Show on Earth. The Scotsman Publications Ltd.
Bartie, A. (2013). The Edinburgh Festivals: Culture and Society in Post-war Britain. Edinburgh University Press. https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9780748670307.001.0001
Bartie, A. (2017). Cultural interactions at the Edinburgh Festivals, C. 1947-1971. Arts and International Affairs, 2(2). https://doi.org/10.18278/aia.2.2.2
Behr, A. (2017a, August 4). What 70 years of the Edinburgh Festival has done for the arts – and the economy. The Conversation. Retrieved September 26, 2025, from https://theconversation.com/what-70-years-of-the-edinburgh-festival-has-done-for-the-arts-and-the-economy-82102
Behr, A. (2017b, August 7). Comment: 70 years of the Edinburgh Festival. Newcastle University: Press Office. Retrieved September 25, 2025, from https://www.ncl.ac.uk/press/articles/archive/2017/08/edinburghfestival/
Bruce, G. (1978). Festival in the North: The story of the Edinburgh Festival. Robert Hale.
Dale, M. (1988). Sore Throats and Overdrafts: An illustrated story of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Precedent Publications.
DHCBALDWIN. (2018, July 24). Who On Earth Created the First Fringe Festival? Dramamommaspeaks. Retrieved September 25, 2025, from https://dramamommaspeaks.com/2018/07/24/who-on-earth-created-the-first-fringe-festival/
Edinburgh Art Festival (n.d.). About EAF. Retrieved September 27, 2025, from https://www.edinburghartfestival.com/about/
Edinburgh Festival Fringe (n.d.). History of the Fringe. Edinburgh Fringe. Retrieved September 25, 2025, from https://www.edfringe.com/about-us/history-of-the-fringe/
Edinburgh International Book Festival (n.d.). About. Retrieved September 27, 2025, from https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/about-us
Edinburgh International Festival (n.d.). Our History. Retrieved September 25, 2025, from https://www.eif.co.uk/about/our-history
Edinburgh International Film Festival (n.d.). About. Retrieved September 27, 2025, from https://www.edfilmfest.org/about/
Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival (n.d.). About Us. Retrieved September 27, 2025, from https://ejbf.co.uk/pages/about-us
Edinburgh Science Festival (n.d.). Festival. Retrieved September 27, 2025, from https://www.edinburghscience.co.uk/festival/
Edinburgh TV Festival (n.d.). Festival History. Retrieved September 27, 2025, from https://www.thetvfestival.com/festival-history/
Fisher, M. (2012). The Edinburgh Fringe Survival Guide: How To Make Your Show A Success. Methuen Drama.
Kemp, R. (1948, August 14). More that is Fresh in Drama. Edinburgh Evening News.
King, B. (2006/2018). A History of the Edinburgh Festivals. BK .. This and That. Retrieved September 25, 2025, from https://bkthisandthat.org.uk/a-history-of-the-edinburgh-festivals/
McMillan, J. (1988). The Traverse Theatre Story 1963–1988 (J. Carnegie, Ed.). Methuen Theatrefile.
Miller, E. (1996). The Edinburgh International Festival 1947 – 1996. Scholar Press.
Moffatt, A. (1978). The Edinburgh Fringe. Johnston and Bacon.
Pollock, D. (2022). Edinburgh Festivals: A Biography. Luath Press Limited.
Rebellato, D., & Harvie, J. (2024). The Fringe: The Rise and Fall of Radical Alternative Theatre. In J. Harvie & D. Rebellato (Eds.), The Cambridge Companion to British Theatre since 1945 (pp. 123–144). chapter, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Prague Fringe (n.d.). Adelaide Festival. Retrieved September 27, 2025, from https://www.praguefringe.com
The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo (n.d.). About us. Retrieved September 27, 2025, from https://www.edintattoo.co.uk/about-us
University of Glasgow (n.d.). Special collections: Edinburgh Festival Fringe. University of Glasgow: Special Collections. Retrieved September 25, 2025, from https://web.archive.org/web/20160318151924/http://www.gla.ac.uk/services/specialcollections/collectionsa-z/scottishtheatrearchive/stacollections/edinburghfestivalfringe/
Venables, B. (2017a, May 9). How Comedy Captured the Edinburgh Fringe: Part 1. The Skinny. Retrieved September 26, 2025, from https://www.theskinny.co.uk/comedy/opinion/how-comedy-captured-the-edinburgh-fringe-part-1
Venables, B. (2017b, August 2). How Comedy Captured the Edinburgh Fringe: Part 4. The Skinny. Retrieved September 26, 2025, from https://www.theskinny.co.uk/festivals/edinburgh-fringe/comedy/how-comedy-captured-the-edinburgh-fringe-part-4
Visual References
Cover Image: Gunson, Jonathan. (2025). The Meadows, Edinburgh, in August 2025.
Figure I: Gunson, Jonathan. (2025). St Giles’s Cathedral in Edinburgh in August 2025.
Figure II: Gunson, Jonathan. (2025). A view of Princes Street Gardens, Edinburgh, in August 2025.
Figure III: Gunson, Jonathan. (2025). The McEwan Hall in Edinburgh in August 2025.
Figure IV: Gunson, Jonathan. (2025). The View over Victoria Street, Edinburgh, in August 2025.
Figure V: Gunson, Jonathan. (2025). Jawbone Walk, the Meadows, Edinburgh, in August 2025.
Table I: Gunson, Jonathan (2025). Timeline of festivals in Edinburgh.
(Edinburgh Art Festival, n.d.; Edinburgh Festival Fringe, n.d.; Edinburgh International Book Festival, n.d.; Edinburgh International Festival, n.d.; Edinburgh International Film Festival, n.d.; Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival, n.d.; Edinburgh Science Festival, n.d.; Edinburgh TV Festival, n.d.; The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo, n.d.)
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