Two hundred years ago today, at ten o’clock in the morning, musicians from London, Carlisle, Glasgow and Edinburgh gathered together for a first rehearsal to present a musical extravaganza never before heard in Scotland, a musical festival! Edinburgh enjoyed its first ‘Festival Week’. “From England, and the remotest parts of Scotland, individuals and whole families […]
Tag: edinburgh
Edinburgh Book fair 2013
This year’s Edinburgh Book Fair is taking place at the Radisson Blu hotel on Edinburgh’s High Street on 8 and 9 March. The Fair is jointly organised by the two professional bodies for the UK antiquarian book trade, the Antiquarian Booksellers Association (ABA) and the Provincial Booksellers Fairs Association (PBFA). This is the biggest book fair […]
The art of modern tapestry: Dovecot Studios since 1912
Setting out to celebrate and document the work and role of international tapestry workshop Dovecot Studios, The art of modern tapestry explores the artistic value, nature and identity of tapestry through images, essays, and the commentaries of weavers, artists and patrons.
Bartholomew’s Large Plan of Edinburgh and Leith
In the summer of 1891, John Bartholomew & Co. launched a cartographic tour de force whose sheer magnificence continues to awe. Bartholomew’s Plan of the City of Edinburgh with Leith and Suburbs. Reduced from the Ordnance Survey and Revised to the Present Date by John Bartholomew, or the Large Plan of Edinburgh & Leith, as it’s more usually […]
New at NLS : Football in verse
A rare 1923 publication has just arrived here at NLS, Football in verse containing over 90 poems by J. Aitken Brown, mostly about Edinburgh’s favourite teams Heart of Midlothian and Hibernian.
Shady dealings in the whisky underworld
Robert Paterson Pattison and Walter Gilchrist Gray Pattison may sound suspiciously Gilbert & Sullivan but were in fact real life Victorian whisky and scandal merchants. Their Leith based dynasty fronted a murky world of fraud and embezzlement that when discovered, shocked all of Edinburgh and caused a sensation.
Edinburgh International Exhibition
In 1886, Prince Albert officially opened the International Exhibition of Industry, Science and Art, a sensational spectacle, held at the Meadows, Edinburgh. One or two artefacts in the Bartholomew Archive Printing Record and an excellent account by J K Gillon, hosted by Fortunecity reveal something of the excitement of this impressive extravaganza.