The Road To Meikle Seggie

To travel the road to Meikle Seggie is to undertake any journey which offers unexpected opportunities for intellectual growth and self-discovery. In the 1970s, Richard Demarco embarked on a series of journeys, starting in Edinburgh, to recover a sense of our living culture in the environments around us. These radiated out across Europe, underpinning the internationalism of this unique Scottish-Italian artist's own extraordinary journey. Forty years later, the journey is renewed with this reproduction of Demarco's original artwork and his first Meikle Seggie essay, along with a new translation into Italian and a new introduction.

The Edinburgh Festival of those days was a much more accessible village... The ground rules were well enough understood. Everything about it was containable. The Fringe was the seed bed for talent and ran happily in step with its established elders and betters. They both knew their place. But then something equally remarkable was about to take place in the New Town of the city I knew and loved... The same year, Roddy Martine is born. In 1963 when, at the age of sixteen, he interviewed Sir Yehudi Menuhin and David Frost for an Edinburgh Festival magazine he edited and the following year, met Marlene Dietrich. Both Richard and Roddy have unique perspectives on the most remarkable international festival of the arts the world has ever known. They have witnessed its evolution over the years and are passionate believers in the power of creativity within everyone. In this fascinating book, Richard – the 2013 UK recipient of the Citizen of Europe medal – explores the original world vision of Sir John Falconer and Rudolph Bing and, with Roddy, recalls the highs and lows of The Edinburgh International Festival, The Fringe, Art, Book, Jazz and Television Festivals, and The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo. Now in its eighth decade, can the Edinburgh Festival survive? Where do we go from here?

What is our understanding of Scotland’s spiritual identity? Does religion belong only to the past – or does it also lie squarely in front of us in the future? Challenging and absorbing, this book sets out to help us to unravel the fundamental spiritual dimension of Scottish identity and enables us to confront our national potential.

Presents a collection of Scottish autobiographical essays of George Davie, David Daiches, Robin Jenkins, Muriel Spark, Tom Nairn, Edwin Morgan, Derick Thomson, Alastair Reid, Agnes Owens, Ronald Stevenson, Richard Demarco, Elizabeth Blackadder, Alasdair Gray, Stewart Conn, Hugh Pennington, Allan Massie, Duncan Macmillan, John Byrne, and others.

In August 1947, an émigré Austrian opera impresario launched the Edinburgh International Festival of Music and Drama to heal the scars of the Second World War through a celebration of the arts. At the same time, a socialist theatre group from Glasgow and other amateur companies protested their exclusion from the festival by performing anyway, inventing the concept of 'fringe' theatre. Now the annual celebration known collectively as the Edinburgh Festival is the largest arts festival in the world, incorporating events dedicated to theatre, film, art, literature, comedy, dance, jazz and even military pageantry. It has launched careers – from Peter Cook and Dudley Moore in Beyond the Fringe to Phoebe Waller-Bridge with Fleabag – mirrored the political and social mood of its times, shaped the city of Edinburgh around it and welcomed a huge all-star cast, including Orson Welles, Grace Kelly, Yehudi Menuhin and Mark E Smith's The Fall and many many more. This is its story.