The National Museum of Scotland is to continue displaying mummified human remains despite two leading Scottish venues covering them up.

The Kelvingrove Gallery and Museum and the Hunterian Museum, both in Glasgow, have taken mummified corpses out of public view over ethical concerns about exhibiting them.

Edinburgh is home to the largest collection of Egyptian remains in Scotland, mainly held by the National Museums of Scotland, but also notably in the University of Edinburgh’s Anatomical Museum collection.

The National Museums has told The Inquirer it has no plans to change its displays featuring mummified human remains and instead use them where appropriate to tell more complete stories about their origins.

What has happened in Glasgow? The mummified corpse of the Egyptian priest Nekht has been taken off public display by Kelvingrove. The reasons it gave included citing a lack of “informed consent from the deceased”, leading to widespread mockery on social media and in the press. The Hunterian Museum has covered the body of Lady Shep-En-Hor in a specially designed cloth so it cannot be seen by visitors.

Why? Generally, museums around the world have been reassessing their treatment of artefacts taken from indigineous cultures, especially ones relating to religious practices or which may have effectively been looted. Most immediately, the International Council of Museums (Icom) has updated the part of its code of ethics relating to human remains, advising museums should take care to uphold their “inherent dignity”.

So what’s different in Edinburgh? National Museums of Scotland and University of Edinburgh have undertaken extensive work in recent years to understand the provenance of their collections and consider the ethical questions they raise. Both institutions have played a leading role in repatriating items to their communities of origin, including ancestral skulls returned to Japan from the university’s Anatomical Museum and a carved memorial pole returned by the museum to the Nisga’a Nation in Canada. The National Museums has chosen to revise the storytelling in particular displays, rather than remove the items from public view.

‘Educate and engage’: The National Museums of Scotland have explicitly adopted a policy of using human remains, where appropriate, as a means of telling the deeper history surrounding them, rather than removing them from display as a default. A National Museums of Scotland spokesperson told The Inquirer that where this is done items are “chosen and curated sensitively, in a way that aims to educate and engage visitors with the human stories being told. Remains are displayed where they are key to telling an important story about a place, object, practice, person or people. “

What about other museums? Edinburgh University holds both Egyptian and human remains including in its Anatomical Museum collection. No human Egyptian remains are believed to be currently on display. The Museum of Childhood on the Royal Mile has Egyptian funerary figures, but these are considered less problematic as they do not include human remains.

Not mummies: All museums have moved away from describing human remains as “mummies”, with all the schlock horror connotations the word brings. Instead, they describe “mummified human remains”, emphasising the people behind them and their stories.

A question of resources? As museums reassess their collections and the way they are displayed, the larger and better resourced, such as the National Museums, are more able to adapt, while others face greater pressures to simply pull items from display.

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YOUR EDINBURGH BRIEFING

STORM BOELO: The capital escaped the worst of the weekend weather as Storm Boelo battered Scotland, with better weather forecast for the days ahead. A 60-year-old man died after being hit by a falling tree, near Castle Douglas, in Dumfries and Galloway, yesterday, and 85mph hit the west coast. High winds and heavy rain caused widespread disruption around Edinburgh and the Lothians over the weekend with reports of fallen trees and localised power cuts and flooding on the roads.

JACK’S THE LAD? The waiting to find out whether our very own Jack Lowden is to be the next James Bond may soon be over. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the Slow Horses star, who appeared in the King’s panto as a 12-year-old, is apparently screen testing in London for the role. He is reportedly up against One Night Only star Callum Turner and possibly Sinners’ Josh O’Connor. Our money’s on Jack.

PUB SHOOTING: One person has been injured after gun shots were fired towards the window of the Robin’s Nest pub in Gilmerton Road on Friday Night. Police described the incident and a targeted attack. The Sun reports that it took place at the wake of 40-year-old Paul MacAulay who had been arrested as part of the police crackdown on organised crime in the capital.

TOP TRANSPORT: Edinburgh has been named one of the best cities in the world for public transport – and the best in Europe. Scotland’s Capital came fourth in Time Out’s list for 2026, based on the views of local residents. The city came behind only Taipei, Singapore and Hong Kong.

HOTEL ACCOLADE: Leith’s luxury floating hotel Fingal, operated by the Royal Yacht Britannia Trust, has been crowned both Europe’s Leading Boutique Hotel and Scotland’s Leading Boutique Hotel at the World Travel Awards 2026, voted for by travel industry professionals and the public.

‘MISOGYNISTIC’ REFORM: Amanda Bland, the Central Scotland and Lothians West MSP who quit reform to stand as an independent, has hit out at her former party, accusing its Scottish leaders of “abusive misogynistic behaviour”, The Sunday Post reports.

PASSIVHAUS SCHOOL: A new 800-capacity school has been opened in Wester Hailes, built to exacting Passivhaus standards to minimise energy consumption and reduce reliance on active heating and cooling systems. It is part of the city’s drive to make its schools estate more environmentally sustainable.

FIREWORKS WARNING: Police have warned anyone causing trouble within the 14 Firework Control Zones in the capital they they will “use every resource available to identify you and bring you to justice.”. The zones, which give police powers to disperse groups gathering in public places, come into effect from Friday until the Sunday after Bonfire Night. The police powers have been combined with extra youth work to tackle disorder in the affected areas in recent years.

ROSE ST HOTEL: Work to convert the former Rose Street Theatre into a 43-room hotel can go-ahead after the developers agreed a contribution of nearly £90,000 towards the city’s tram development and a further £50,000 for public realm improvements. Morningbridge Ltd received final approval for the conversion of 204 Rose Street which includes a rooftop café/bar.

RUGBY STAR RAPE TRIAL: Former Scotland rugby star Tim Visser is to go on trial accused of controlling, abusing and raping a woman over the course of 14 years in Edinburgh. The 39-year-old, of Milton Bridge, near Penicuik, in Midlothian, is charged with raping the woman on various occasions, taking intimate images of her without her consent and controlling various aspects of her life including her finances and what she ate. Visser entered a not guilty plea at the High Court in Glasgow and a trial date has been set for 12 January 2028 in Edinburgh.

FARM WIN: Congratulations to Chloe Rodriguez, an Edinburgh-based livestock adviser helping farmers across Scotland and northern England improve animal welfare, who has won Farm Adviser of the Year at the 2026 British Farming Awards. Chloe, an animal welfare specialist at Galebreaker, received the national accolade in recognition of her practical, research-led approach to improving livestock health, welfare and productivity.

Pic of the week

THE BUSINESS

Edinburgh’s creative community comes together for awards

Finalists have been chosen from more than 140 nominations for the 2026 Creative Edinburgh Awards from across the city’s creative community, shortlisting projects and organisations across eight categories.

Executive Director at Creative Edinburgh Ola Wojtkiewicz notes this year marks the 15^th anniversary of the Awards and said: “The Awards are about more than recognition; they bring together artists, communities, organisations and funders, strengthening the connections that help creativity thrive.”

Among this year’s finalists are the Pianodrome (Like a huge, walnut, mahogany, musical hug), Edinburgh Arts Festival (Why the UK’s biggest arts festival has found a new home in Leith), the Hidden Door Festival (Turning an empty paper factory into the city’s hottest festival venue) and Summerhall Arts (‘You can’t just build something like Summerhall. You have to take the journey’).

The 2026 Awards will take place on 13 November at Central Hall, and the evening will be opened with a welcome speech from Màiri McAllan, Cabinet Secretary for Education, Culture and Gaelic, who commented: “For fifteen years, these Awards have celebrated the individuals, organisations and projects that bring culture and creativity to life in our capital, and the partnerships that help that creativity flourish.”

Creative Edinburgh brings together creative thinkers and makers across the city through events, career development and mentoring.

OFFICE BOOST: One of Edinburgh’s best known modern office buildings is to undergo a major refurbishment that is expected to help ease the city’s shortage of Grade A workspace, reports Daily Business. The 60,000 sq ft Aspect Building, formerly Exchange Tower, will see work get underway this month with completion expected by the end of next year.

Plans include enlarged dual entrances from Canning Street and Torphichen Street, landscaped courtyard gardens, refurbished communal areas throughout, wellness facilities, secure cycle storage and at the heart of the amenity offering will be The Canopy, a sixth-floor rooftop terrace and pavilion available to all occupiers.

BUSINESS FESTIVAL: The annual Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce Business Festival returns tomorrow with a full day programme shaped around our theme: Adapt, Compete & Grow. More than 150 attendees are expected to attend the event, at the Royal Bank of Scotland Conference Centre at Gogarburn.

THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT

PICK YOUR GHOSTS: You’re really spoiled for choice in the run-up to Halloween. If you want big-hearted, funny, yet moving, family-friendly entertainment, then Ghosts: The haunting of Button Hall is on at The Cameo and other cinemas. Alternatively, you might prefer Ghosts: A Halloween exhibition in a creepy Edinburgh crypt. If you want to join Professors Richard Wiseman and Caroline Watt in near darkness to learn more about their investigations in Edinburgh’s Underground Vaults, tickets are free, but you must book in advance.

LAST CHANCE TO BE SEEN: Catherine Opie has been named one of Time magazine’s most influential people in art. Her powerful portrait exhibition Catherine Opie: To Be Seen at the Royal Scottish Academy on The Mound only runs until Sunday at 5pm. This week is your last chance to see - or re-see - it.

FIRE FEST: Saturday sees the Samhuinn Fire Festival return to Calton Hill, but if you don’t have your tickets already then you are going to be disappointed. You can get a taste of what to expect/what you’re missing in Sarah McArthur’s long read All hail the Queen of Winter.

QUICK BITES

TOP CAFES: A number of Edinburgh winners have claimed top prizes at The Scottish Café & Bakery Awards including The Gilmerton Bridge Café as Café of the Year, The Milkman as Restaurant Café of the Year, and Café Frokada as Café Bar of the Year.

SPICY OPENING: A new Indian restaurant, Royal India Kitchen and Bar, is to open at The Courtyard, Eskmills, this week, taking over the former home of Italian eatery Crolla’s Italian Kitchen.

“If he hadn’t been caught, he would just have gone on and on and on…”

Even 43 years later, in the comfortable and bright surroundings of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery café in Queen Street the thought causes former Deputy Chief Constable Tom Wood and I to pause, because the man we are talking about is the notorious child serial killer Robert Black, once Britain’s most wanted man.

The story of Black and the groundbreaking police investigation which caught him is told in Wood’s new book “Sex, Spies and Bloody Murder”, which covers some famous criminal cases, several of which he was directly involved in. One of these was Black. He was a delivery driver who was intimate with the UK road network, spending countless days on the road in his dirty and unkempt van.

At its height the case involved six police forces and thanks to Hector Clark, who was in overall command, became pioneering in the use of computers in building a case against a suspect and helped shape the development of the HOLMES system now used in complex and multi-force investigations.

Tom said: “We knew a lot about him – we knew he was a driver of some kind, he was a paedophile, he was a snatcher, and we knew he travelled regularly between Scotland and England. What we didn’t know was his name, or where he lived.”

Apex predator

“Black was an apex predator. I spoke at length about the case with Hector and he was in no doubt. If Black hadn’t been caught, he would just have gone on and on and on. I spoke with another of the senior investigators, and he described Black as a like a heat-seeking missile. Any time he was out and about, he was seeking opportunity.”

The abductor and killer of at least four young girls – Susan Maxwell (11), Caroline Hogg (5), Sarah Harper (10) and Jennifer Cardy (9) - Black died in a Northern Ireland prison ten years ago of a heart attack at the age of 68. When he died, police were close to also charging him with the 1978 murder of Devon paper girl Genette Tate, who was 13.

Wood’s admiration for the way in which Clark led the investigation is front and centre. “Hector was the best detective I ever knew. He had been involved earlier in the Peter Sutcliffe investigations (the notorious Yorkshire Ripper serial killer) and told me that in pursuing that case good detectives had been let down by bad systems. Sutcliffe came to the attention of police nine times during the investigation, but because of the complexity of the case involving several forces using old card index systems he was not flagged up as he would have been by better systems. Several women died after he had first come to police attention. Hector was determined to do everything he could to avoid that happening again.”

The role of Hector Clark

Clark, then Assistant Chief Constable of Northumbria Police, knew that Lothian and Borders had just installed a new computer system, and approached Chief Constable William Sutherland in Edinburgh for permission to use the computer for the Caroline Hogg case. Special software was developed, and it became the first murder investigation to be computerised with terminals in Edinburgh and in Leicestershire, where her body had been found. The system established was to prove invaluable after Black’s arrest in building the case against him and would help shape HOLMES, the Home Office computer system which was in the process of being developed. It would be used later in the investigation.

Clark would himself go on to become Deputy Chief Constable of Lothian and Borders under Sir William Sutherland.

Black’s arrest happened in 1990 in the most dramatic fashion at Stow, in the border country south of Edinburgh, when police officers responded to a call from a local resident that a young girl had been abducted in a van.

Extraordinary arrest

One of the officers responding had special reason to fear what was happening. His daughter matched the description and was returning home from school at that time. The call had been made by a neighbour.

He and a colleague were first on the scene. They were speaking to the neighbour when the van reappeared on the A7 through the village. The officers stopped it, and the local policemen opened the van doors.

Tom takes up the story in his book: “At first the officer saw only a jumble of old boxes and rubbish, nothing apparently suspicious. But he persevered until under all the old boxes he found what appeared to be an old sleeping bag. Opening it, he found the barely conscious body of a young girl, her mouth taped shut, her arms and legs bound. Ripping off the gag to let the girl breathe, the officer confirmed what he had feared since he received the original call and the description of the girl. The barely conscious girl, the victim of the abduction, was his own daughter.”

I ask Tom how the officer was able to restrain himself at that point. “I spoke to him about that later. In reality, his priority was totally human. He just wanted to get his daughter, to find her alive and he was just so shocked and relieved. By the time he’d done that there were other officers on the scene dealing with Black.”

A life-saving legacy

After his arrest, the investigation focused on building the case against Black. By this time, the HOLMES system was up and running. Through a combination of the information that had been fed into the computer, and through the detailed record keeping of the company which employed Black, the investigation was able to place him at or close to the scene of the crimes on each occasion.

Yet the full extent of his killing may never be confirmed. The investigation was able to place Black at, or close to, the disappearances of young girls across Europe, crimes he never admitted to or faced charges in relation to.

While incarcerated, he was interviewed at length by renowned criminal psychologist Ray Wyre. As a final question, Wyre asked Black what more parents could do to protect their children. His response was chilling: “Never take their eyes off their kids, I suppose.”

The is far more positive legacy, however, from the work of those detectives. Their far-sighted approach ensured a methodical, computerised approach became a basic part of policing sooner than it otherwise might have done. As a result, countless lives may have been saved across the country.

For today’s long read Nico Ulz has been visiting Waverley Station - and trying to find his way out without enduring the infamous ‘Waverley scrum’.

Most visitors will be familiar with the scrum that takes place at the top of the Waverley Steps as passengers pouring in and out of the station run across the path of pedestrians heading along Princes Street. As you’ll know, it isn’t pretty.

You can read all about what Nico discovered there and a potentially neat idea for sorting it out below. First though here’s your regular midweek roundup and cultural highlights for the week ahead.

Your Edinburgh Briefing

FESTIVAL DRAMA: Line of Duty and Good Omens director Douglas Mackinnon is working on a new paramedic drama set in the middle of Edinburgh’s Festival season. Mackinnon told Variety he is developing BurnTime as a series combining drama and dark comedy following a newly trained paramedic working her first shift amid the mayhem of August in Edinburgh. The drama takes its name from the work-related burnout suffered by many paramedics.

LE TOUR TICKETS: Tickets for the 2027 Tour de France opening ceremony at Edinburgh Castle go on sale from tomorrow, with prices starting from £27. The ceremony staged by the Edinburgh Military Tattoo takes place on Wednesday, 30 June, two days before the race starts out from Edinburgh. You can register to get notification on pre-sale tickets on the official tour website.

ROMAN FACE: The face of a man who died on the Roman frontier in Inveresk, East Lothian, almost 2,000 years ago has been reconstructed from skeletal remains. The man's skull will be displayed alongside the digital facial reconstruction in the Roman Scotland: Life On The Edge Of Empire exhibition which opens at the National Museum of Scotland on 14 November.

PUPILS STAY-AWAY: Some primary schools in the capital were reportedly “half-empty” on Tuesday following the hoax bomb threat that saw schools evacuated across the city on Monday. City leaders have moved to reassure parents that it is safe for their children to return, amid concerns about misinformation about the incident being spread on social media.

GRIFFINS RETURN: A pair of griffin sculptures, which once guarded the entrance gate to the historic Muirhouse Mansion, have been restored after spending more than 60 years in storage. They will sit at the entrance to the new affordable housing development, Silverlea, close to where the mansion stood, near the Granton Waterfront.

MORE UNI CUTS: Edinburgh University is set to close four more degree programmes as it pursues cuts of £140m from its annual budget. Four of the 11 postgraduate programmes run at the Edinburgh Futures Institute, which include Data and Artificial Intelligence Ethics, Creative Industries, and Climate Change and Sustainability, are set to be closed new enrolments, reports The Herald, although which ones are yet to be confirmed.

SAM ON TOUR: Acclaimed singer-songwriter Sam Fender is to perform at Scottish Gas Murrayfield on 8 July next year, as part of his biggest headline tour to date. Tickets for the tour of six cities in the UK and Ireland will go on sale from sites including Ticketmaster at 9.30am on Friday, 30 October.

ARTS PLEA: Save Summerhall – the petition launched to persuade City of Edinburgh Council planners to turn down proposed development by AMA that would see arts space at the complex significantly reduced to make way for student housing and a hotel – has hit 6,000 signatures. Summerhall is currently home to more than 100 small businesses, artists studios and creative businesses as well as being a Fringe venue.

Your Pick of the (Cultural) Pops

Greetings, Pop Pickers!

With Autumn leaves beginning their golden descent onto the cobbles (sorry, setts), at least half the football fans in the capital still reeling from Hearts’ bruising recent visit to Celtic Park, and humanity (or at least our technology) blasting off from Japan on Monday to gather a piece of Mars’ moon Phobos, there is an undeniable sense of the universe shifting around us - on many levels. While that spacecraft won’t touch down on Martian rock until August 2027, you thankfully won’t have to travel across the solar system to experience something extraordinary this week, writes Will Quinn.

In fact, Edinburgh is so utterly spoiled for choice at the moment that it effortlessly proves its credentials as a heavyweight cultural capital well outside August - even if it has given this poor chart-decider an almighty headache! Several outstanding shows and exhibitions continuing their runs around town have been ruthlessly squeezed out this week simply to make room for the sheer volume of incoming brilliance. Yes, indeed!

Right then, pop pickers - let’s count them down.

Honourable Mentions: Bottom’s Dream, Halloween at Filmhouse & A Trio of Classical Gems

Bubbling just under the Top 5 is a ridiculously strong slate. Currently running at the Traverse, A Play, a Pie and a Pint’s Bottom’s Dream (until Saturday) sees writer-performer Martin O’Connor and director Debbie Hannan riffing on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream over a lunchtime pie. Down on Lothian Road, Halloween at Filmhouse (throughout October) slips from number five into the honourables, continuing its gloriously spooky season of cult curiosities and 4K restorations.

Meanwhile, classical music lovers are facing an embarrassment of riches. At the Usher Hall, the RSNO presents Brahms’ Violin Concerto (Friday), with the orchestra’s own Leader, Maya Iwabuchi, stepping into the solo spotlight under conductor Emilia Hoving alongside works by Sibelius and Saariaho. Over at The Queen’s Hall, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra serves up Barber’s Adagio & Violin Concerto (October 29th – 30th), pairing conductor Ryan Bancroft and virtuoso violinist Clara-Jumi Kang in a programme bookended by jazz-tinged Schulhoff and Kurt Weill’s darkly brilliant Second Symphony. Finally, if you fancy some atmospheric strings under the historic vaults of the High Kirk, The Piccadilly Sinfonietta brings Vivaldi’s Four Seasons by Candlelight to St Giles’ Cathedral (October 31st). Don’t miss ‘em!

New in at Number 5 (Joint) are... Paul Foot: The Future (Monkey Barrel Comedy, October 29th) & Fin Taylor: The Pre-emptive Comeback Special (The Queen’s Hall, October 31st)

Sharing the fifth spot this week are two stand-up hours from two wildly different comedians. Over at Monkey Barrel, pioneering surrealist Paul Foot arrives with The Future, mourning the days when humanity dreamed of jetpacks and solar-powered bidets. I was lucky enough to review Paul at the Fringe a few years ago; suffice it to say, the legendary comic from whom the odious Russell Brand stole his schtick still does it a hundred times better than the tribute act currently on trial.

Across town at The Queen’s Hall, Fin Taylor brings The Pre-emptive Comeback Special. Riding a massive wave from his viral podcasts and interview series Fin vs the Internet, Taylor is the freshest British comic voice to hit YouTube in years - joyfully flirting with cancellation whilst gleefully puncturing any famous ego brave enough to step into a studio with him. Whilst he’s paid his dues as a seasoned Fringe regular, it will be fascinating to see whether the massive popularity he finally found online translates back onto a (big) stage.

New in at Number 4 is... Sinfonia of London: Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 (Usher Hall, October 31st)

Sweeping into fourth place is an orchestral powerhouse. As the honourable mentions prove, the capital is spoiled for classical highlights in the coming days, but it is hard to look past this visit from the multi-award-winning Sinfonia of London under the baton of maestro John Wilson, joined by superstar pianist Benjamin Grosvenor. Having first astonished the classical world at just eleven years old in the BBC Young Musician competition before becoming the youngest-ever British pianist signed to Decca Classics, the multiple Gramophone Award-winner now ranks among the most electrifying and sought-after virtuosos on the planet. The programme is an undeniable crowd-pleaser: Grażyna Bacewicz’s propulsive Concerto for String Orchestra opens the evening before Grosvenor tackles the swooning, cinematic romanticism of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2, all culminating in Rimsky-Korsakov’s dazzling orchestral showpiece Scheherazade.

New in at Number 3 is... Tristan & Yseult (Royal Lyceum Theatre, October 20th – 24th)

Claiming the bronze medal is a fresh revival of Emma Rice’s landmark production. Often billed as one of the more influential British theatre shows of the 21st century, its claim to that historical crown is no empty boast. First dreamed up with Kneehigh in Cornwall back in 2003 before conquering the National Theatre and touring the globe, the show famously reshaped British ensemble theatre - turning rough-and-ready cabaret, physical invention, and big-hearted irreverence into the blueprint for a generation of stage-makers. Filtering the ancient Cornish myth of forbidden passion through the eyes of the “Unloved”, Rice’s staging brings together live music, acrobatics, and theatrical mischief. With John Leader and Nandi Bhebhe stepping in as the star-crossed lovers, it is a golden opportunity for those of us who missed its original heyday to see how a modern legend holds up two decades later.

New in at Number 2 is... Man to Man (Traverse Theatre, October 29th – November 7th)

Rocketing straight into the silver spot is a genuine theatrical event. Nearly four decades after originating the English translation on the Traverse stage in 1987, Tilda Swinton returns to Cambridge Street in Manfred Karge’s blistering solo play ahead of transfers to Berlin and New York. Reunited with director Stephen Unwin and designer Bunny Christie, Swinton plays Ella Gericke - a working-class German woman in the 1930s who puts on her dead husband’s trousers to survive across turbulent decades spanning the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, and East Germany, now seamlessly updated to take in the fall of the Berlin Wall and the modern resurgence of the far right. Catching its London run at the Royal Court for The Quinntessential Review, Sass MacDonald praised Swinton’s commanding inner stillness and extraordinary metamorphosis inside Christie’s littered white-box set, calling it a chilling reminder of how history repeats itself. Tickets are like gold dust, so raid the returns queue if you must!

Staying at Number 1 is... The Scottish International Storytelling Festival (Various Venues, until October 31st)

Holding fast at the top of the pops for a second week, and now in full swing after officially opening its doors yesterday! Under this year’s theme of Bird and Beast, the festival once again transforms the city into a roaring international hearth of folklore, live music, and oral craft. Alongside Donald Smith’s marathon sessions on St Columba and Ossian, Finnish cow-calling, and Shonaleigh’s Anatolian collaborations, the packed 11-day programme is bursting with treasures. Highlights include an opening-day conversation between Nicola Sturgeon and Joyce McMillan; Bologna’s Fraternal Compagnia reinterpreting the myth of Daedalus and Icarus in the sharp, satirical style of Dario Fo and Franca Rame to mark Fo’s centenary; Jumana Moon and Dawud Duncan blending the classical Farsi masterpiece The Conference of the Birds with Scottish trad music; and David Hughes weaving the Celtic myth of Mad Sweeney together with the history of Glasgow’s Pollok Free State. Brilliant stuff! Not ‘arf!

And that’s your Top 5!

So whether you are hunting down a miracle ticket for Tilda Swinton at the Traverse, surrendering to Emma Rice’s mythic romance at the Lyceum, soaking in Rachmaninoff at the Usher Hall, or laughing yourself silly with Paul Foot and Fin Taylor, you have quite the week ahead of you.

Until next week: Stay bright!

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The Waverley Scrum

Can Edinburgh fix its chaotic train station entrance?

by Nico Ulz

Every day, thousands of travellers collide at the top of the Waverley Steps, the busiest exit from Edinburgh’s main railway station.

If you step off a train and climb the stairs towards Princes Street, you are immediately greeted not by the beauty of the city, but by a wall of elbows, suitcases and bus queues. At peak times, the top of the steps resembles a rugby scrum more than the exit of an international transport hub. It is a friction point familiar to both tourists and residents. Passengers spilling out of Scotland’s second-busiest railway station collide head-on with shoppers, commuters, and tourists navigating the narrow, cluttered pavement along Princes Street.

“There will not be a single resident in Edinburgh that hasn’t found themselves frustratingly jammed in a crowd of people at the Princes Street entrance to Waverley Station,” says Finlay McFarlane, a councillor who represents the city centre. “Second to the crowded pavements of South Bridge it must be one of the worst pedestrian experiences in the city as you come face to face with a litter bin, taxi rank, bus stops, visitors arriving and departing with trundle cases and people trying (somehow) to cross the road through the steady line of traffic. Add in the poor state of the roof of Waverley Mall and it really does offer a bad first impression of the city.”

A simple solution?

While the station features three main pedestrian access points: Princes Street, Market Street and Waverley Bridge, the majority of foot traffic is centred around the northern exit to Princes Street. However, a straightforward solution might be sitting right in front of Network Rail: shifting the primary pedestrian flow onto the existing ramp that leads to Waverley Bridge. Reorientating passengers down this corridor could eliminate the bottleneck and offer an immediate visual reward upon arrival.

Read more

The moment when Colin Firth appeared in his soaked shirt after apparently swimming in a lake in Pride and Prejudice has already been credited with many things.

It has been described as the scene which captured millions of hearts and created one of the most memorable sequences in TV history. It has also been seen as the saviour of Lyme Park, the once ailing stately home on the edge of the Peak District where the BBC adaptation was shot, and which saw a huge upsurge in paying visitors after the series was first broadcast in 1995.

Now staff and students at Edinburgh College of Art are hoping the famous shirt - which is currently on display in the Old Town - can play a small part in another dramatic rescue mission.

Visitors to Dovecot Studios’ Costume Couture: Sixty Years of Cosprop exhibition can admire the shirt which more than almost any item embodies the huge impact of the costume industry on the public consciousness.

‘This garment transformed a character first introduced in Jane Austen’s novel into a modern screen icon,’ say the organisers of the exhibition, which also features meticulously crafted costumes worn in a range of prestigious productions such as A Room with a View and Out of Africa.

Just a stone’s throw away are premises that form part of Edinburgh College of Art (ECA), where a drama of a different kind is unfolding.

The institution’s renowned Performance Costume undergraduate degree - which has long provided a pipeline of talent flowing into top film and TV productions around the world - faces the final curtain, as do fellow courses in jewellery and silversmithing, and textiles.

Such a decision has prompted a howl of outrage from students past, present, and future - as well as those working in the craft, design, and entertainment ecosystems in Scotland and far beyond. The move, they say, is “shortsighted” and will unravel an asset tightly woven into the national cultural fabric.

One petition calling for ECA and budget-slashing University of Edinburgh - the two merged in 2015 - to reverse the decision now has around 17,000 signatures.

The issue has reached the Scottish Parliament, where Q Manivannan, MSP for Edinburgh and Lothians East, says the closures will severely erode the arts in Scotland, and hamper the economy for decades. “I am convening an emergency public arts meeting at Summerhall on the 1st of November, to address the ongoing crisis in culture and arts in Edinburgh,” they say, “with students and staff from ECA, MSPs, councillors, and members of the wider arts sector.”

‘An incredible reputation for our cultural output’

In the role of petition-starter is Irene Kernan, director of Craft Scotland, the national development agency for craft. She tells The Edinburgh Inquirer that people across the costume industry and beyond are “at a loss” to understand why the courses have “suddenly” been cut.

“It’s just bewildering, because the courses are excellent,” she says. “They attract [students] from across the globe, the outputs are incredible.

“It’s obviously going to have an impact on Edinburgh, but it will have an impact Scotland-wide as well, and on the reputation and prestige of Scotland’s culture.

“Scotland has an incredible reputation for its cultural output and its cultural talent, so I just don’t understand this decision to damage that.”

ECA graduates have worked on marquee showbiz productions including Outlander, The Crown, Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon, Barbie, and the Marvel and DC franchises, as well as recently defunct Scottish soap River City, and helped bring to life theatre productions for the RSC, English National Ballet, and Scottish Opera, for example.

The petition quotes signatories including Katy from Glasgow, who says: “I graduated in 2010 from the BA in Performance Costume Design, and owe my 16 years working in film and [high-end television] to the foundational skills I was taught during my studies. Losing this essential course at a time when Scotland’s film industry is growing is incredibly misjudged.”

Design industry ‘worth more than retail sector’

Screen Scotland last year said the sector was on course to contribute £1 billion to the economy by the end of 2030/31, having already leapt by 15 per cent to £718 million between 2021 and 2023. And there have since been many screen productions filming north of the Border, such as The Batman: Part II in Glasgow and Dept Q in Edinburgh in the last few months alone.

Anna Campbell-Jones, renowned Scottish interior designer and judge on Scotland’s Home of the Year, says the creative industry supports the economy in many ways.

“It supports manufacturing, it supports retail, it supports absolutely everything. It filters up and down through the entire supply chain,” she tells The Edinburgh Inquirer.

She cites the British Design Council in September 2026 publishing a report finding that the design sector boosted the UK economy by £136.7bn in 2023, an increase of 40 per cent from 2019, and more than the UK’s entire retail sector (£114bn).

Campbell-Jones is also among many making the point that the affected ECA courses offer skills that are resistant to and the antithesis of artificial intelligence (AI).

Specifically, she cites growing “ennui” with AI-generated design, and increasing interest instead in something “human-made,” citing major fashion house Hermès’ hand-drawn, hand-animated website.

“These high-end companies are pivoting away from super-slick imagery. It just feels like the wrong time to ditch courses that support jobs that young people can have where they are using their hands, because there aren’t many.

Read more

The future of AI will be at the centre of discussions when the finance leaders of the world’s biggest economies gather in Edinburgh next year.

A security cordon will be thrown up around the Edinburgh International Conference Centre (EICC) when it plays host to the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors’ Summit on 8 and 9 July 2027.

The gathering comes ahead of G20 leaders summit in Manchester in November and UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham has already made clear that AI and its potential impact on economic growth and jobs will be one of its central themes. The summit is also expected to discuss ways to build economic resilience and support growth in developing countries.

Bringing one of the leading gatherings of world economic leaders to Edinburgh is seen as a coup and further evidence of the city’s ability to host events on a world stage.

The summit is expected to attract significant protests, coming amid controversy over the UK and Scottish Governments support for hyperscale AI data centres (a mass march is already planned down the Royal Mile on Saturday 14 November this year).

It is the biggest event of its kind to involve Edinburgh since the G8 Summit at Gleneagles in 2005, which saw the massive Make Poverty History march through the capital, as well as violent clashes between riot police and protesters in the city centre.

Who’ll be there? There are likely to be protesters in the streets, armed security on the rooftops, many of the biggest movers and shakers in world finance in the auditorium and thousands of support staff staying in city hotels. Many of the most influential attendees will not be household names, but hold powers to move international markets, with finance ministers and bank governors making decisions affecting borrowing and investment costs.

But its the big guns, right? Yes. The finance ministers of China, Japan, Germany, France and India, senior representatives of the EU and African Union, and the heads of some of the biggest global banking institutions.

Give me some names: Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank, UK Chancellor John Healey and head of the Bank of England Andrew Bailey are all expected to attend, as well as Kristalina Georgieva, the head of the International Monetary Fund, and World Bank president Ajay Banga.

Who won’t be? President Trump and other international leaders are not expected to attend the Edinburgh summit ahead of the leaders’ gathering in Manchester later in the year. All eyes will be on who the US sends, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent missed IMF and World Bank meetings in Bangkok last week so his presence cannot be taken for granted.

‘Boost for city’: The EICC has previously hosted world leaders at events such as the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) and the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. The latest summit is seen as an economic boost for the city and a chance to showcase Edinburgh as a convention destination. Councillor Lezley Marion Cameron, chair of the EICC board, said: “It also boosts Edinburgh’s offering as a business events city and shows confidence in the EICC’s facilities and track record of delivering international political and financial gatherings to world class standards.”

What will it mean for AI? Burnham told the UN General Assembly that he wanted to agree a set of global principles covering transparency and safe development of AI, while the UK Government has said it may be necessary to legislate to protect the public. The summit would be a key opportunity to try to build consensus on these hotly-contested isssues.

What is it likely to achieve? That’s a good question. Meaningful agreements at such summits are not easy and the last Finance Minister’s Summit, held in the US last month, led to a chair’s statement to which China lodged a series of objections.

YOUR EDINBURGH BRIEFING

REFORM SCRUTINY: The finances of Reform UK are now under scrutiny in Scotland. According to The Sunday Times, police are assessing whether a number of Reform UK candidates – including several in West Lothian and Edinburgh who ran to become Holyrood MSPs in May - broke election spending rules by not submitting spending returns as required. Juliet Swann, nations and regions manager at Transparency International UK, said: “Complying with the rules on political finance is not an optional extra, it is a legal requirement and a democratic duty.”

SWIMMER’S BRAIN CANCER WIN: Swimmer Archie Woodburn has secured improvements to brain cancer care and research after meeting Andy Burnham. The Prime Minister announced a new national brain cancer clinical lead to oversee treatment and promised a review of progress to ensure patients receive treatment sooner. The 25-year-old from Edinburgh was a finalist in the Commonwealth Games despite being diagnosed with three inoperable brain tumours two years ago. (You can read more of this story in Swimming champion’s fight for time highlights life and death struggle)

CROW HILL BONES: Archaeologists have been left puzzled after investigating a pile of hundreds of bones found on Arthur’s Seat following last summer’s wild fire. Analysis found the collection contained more than 800 bone fragments from a wide range of animals, including cattle, cat, red deer, weasel and birds, with some of the remains dating from around 1810 and 1950. None were human. Noting that someone had gone to a great effort to take the bones to the remote spot where they were found, known as Crow Hill, the Histroric Environment Scotland archeologists concluded: “While the collection is not archaeologically significant, it remains no less intriguing.”

TEACHER ATTACKS: A more than doubling of attacks on secondary school teachers in Edinburgh over the past four years has been reported in The Herald, which says that a FOI request has shown attacks up from 38 in 2022/23 to 82 in 2025/26, or a rise of 115%. Of the total number of 210 attacks, some 154 were physical assaults, and of these 40% were committed by children with additional support needs. Councillors are calling for action.

PASSPORT FAST-TRACK: Edinburgh Airport is introducing contactless passport checks which have been shown to be quicker than the current eGates. Instead of putting their passport onto a reader, passengers will be photographed on approach and their image use for live verification by passport and immigration controls, with the gate opening automatically if all checks are cleared.

FLATS IN LIMBO: Flat owners fear being left in limbo for years after the council was forced to pull out of buying their problem plagued properties. Westfield Court in Gorgie has been hit by a series of problems including a faulty heating system and cladding panels, leaking sewage pipes and flooding. The council, which owns more than a third of the 94 flats, planned to buy all the flats and demolish the eight-storey block. However, lawyers have advised the local authority cannot buy the flats at market value, ignoring the cost of outstanding repairs, due to “best value” regulations.

HIBS FANS BAN: Hibs have banned their Block Seven supporter group from their next three matches after pictures showed some fans clashing with police and stewards during the club’s game at Dundee United earlier in the month. The move came after police confirmed 15 people had been charged in connection with disorder following Hibs' match away to St Johnstone last month. The club promised to "take appropriate action as necessary" following the latest disorder.

Pic of the week

THE BUSINESS

City Chamber wins UK award for leadership programme

An Edinburgh programme that is designed to help shape the Scottish business leaders of the future has been recognised with a prestigious national award.

Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce received the Outstanding Achievement Award at the British Chambers of Commerce Awards 2026 for its Rising Stars Leadership Programme, delivered in partnership with the University of Edinburgh.

Developed by Edinburgh Chamber, the six-part programme was shaped directly by the needs of Edinburgh’s business community. Insights from the Chamber’s Membership Survey identified leadership and management, communication, and AI and digital skills as key development priorities for employers.

The programme builds on the success of the Chamber’s wider Rising Stars network, which has engaged more than 500 professionals from over 200 organisations and 23 sectors since 2022. Liz Dalton (McAreavey), Chief Executive of Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce, said: “As workplaces and technologies continue to evolve, future leaders need more than technical expertise. They need adaptability, sound judgement and the confidence to lead through change. By investing in those capabilities early, we’re helping organisations nurture talent, build resilience and support long-term economic success.

“This award also highlights the value of collaboration between business and academia. Working with The University of Edinburgh, we’ve combined employer insight with world-class expertise to create a programme that is already making a meaningful impact.”

Entries are currently open for the next programme cohort.

CAR FIRM CLOSES: Edinburgh-based car trader Cars4You Ltd has gone into administration, with all 26 employees being made redundant. The company, founded a decade ago, operated from five main showrooms in Scotland, including two in the Capital and one in Midlothian at Straiton.

BRANCH INVESTMENT: Royal Bank of Scotland has invested £520,000 in refurbishing its Edinburgh West End branch as part of its initiative to invest in its branch network across Scotland, having committed to no further closures until at least 2029.

THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT

WORLD’S BEST PHOTOS: Enjoy some of the most beautiful and dramatic images taken from around the world over the last year at the World Press Photo Exhibition 2026 at the Scottish Parliament. This year’s themes include the overstep of power and the climate crisis, but also resistance, rebuilding and recovery. The exhibition is free to enter and runs Monday-Saturday 10am-5pm until 7 November.

GET SCRAPPY: The Edinburgh Open Workshop in Leith are inviting families to make, mend and transform for Halloween at a free Scrappy Halloween event on Saturday. Learn how to make ghost costumes from old bedsheets, bat wings from scraps, knitted spiderwebs, and much more.

CINEMA SPIRITS: Talking of spooks and haunting, Ghosts: The Possession of Button House opens in cinemas across the city from Friday, including The Cameo and Everyman. See a haunted house as you’ve never seen one before on the big screen, thanks to the team behind Horrible Histories.

QUICK BITES

WINNERS ALL: Edinburgh’s restaurant community tasted multiple successes at the Scottish Restaurant Awards 2026 including overall winners in Buffet Restaurant of the Year Fogo de Chão; Fine Dining Restaurant of the Year Dùthchas; Vegetarian Friendly Restaurant of the Year Hendersons; Vegan Friendly Restaurant of the Year PULSE PlantBased HomeCooking; European Restaurant of the Year Cafe St Honorė; and Fish and Chip Restaurant of the Year The Crab & Lobster Fish Shack in South Queensferry.

DRAM GOOD: Leith-based whisky maker Woven has created a bespoke Scotch blend with Ottolenghi, the renowned restaurant brand which opened their first Scottish venue on George Street earlier this month. The award-winning whisky blender has created a release to complement the restaurant’s Mediterranean inspired cooking.

‘We were set up as a nomadic organisation - that was our business plan,’ says Sam Gough. ‘But we’d love to be here because this is where everything started and it’s what we know. The building is part of our ethos and always was and always will be.’

Armed with a firm handshake and a forthright gaze, Gough is the chief executive of Summerhall Arts, the charity managing the cultural output of the former veterinary college in Edinburgh, writes Will Quinn.

The site, recently acquired by property developer AMA Homes, faces partial demolition to accommodate student housing and a boutique hotel. It’s the stuff of cultural nightmares, yet Gough, undaunted, views the current public consultation as a practical test of the city’s commitment to the arts.

‘We know that the arts in Scotland are under threat,’ says Gough. ‘Especially building-based organisations are under threat every day. This is another threat to a significant building-based organisation.’

Following the publication of AMA’s initial plans, Summerhall Arts issued a statement objecting to the developer’s proposed footprint, and echoing his comments to me.

‘We are concerned that the current plans appear to earmark some of Summerhall’s most distinctive spaces for demolition,’ the statement reads. ‘These spaces are not simply parts of a building. They are integral to Summerhall’s identity, character and cultural offer.’

The proposed development affects up to 80% of the site, encompassing the historic Anatomy Lecture Theatre, Tech Cube 0, and the Dissection Room. While Gough acknowledges the sprawling campus requires maintenance, he questions the framing of the evidence presented in the developer’s early presentations.

‘I’m not sure some of the photographs that were put on in the consultation are as bad as they look,’ he says when we sit down in one of Summerhall’s undeniably stately rooms. Without a comprehensive structural report, he maintains it is difficult to determine whether the highlighted defects are foundational or superficial.

‘What you don’t photograph is the beautiful artwork on the ceilings, the amount of activity that a hundred of us are doing, plus the beautiful spaces,’ he says.

A track record of resistance

This is not a sudden crisis, but the latest development in a protracted struggle. Summerhall’s future was abruptly destabilised three years ago when its former owners - Oesselmann Estate Limited, the family trust through which founder Robert McDowell and his relatives held the property - placed the labyrinthine site on the open market, pulling the rug out from under McDowell, who did not want to sell, and the creative community that had built its home there.

The resulting shockwave generated a local petition that gathered 15,000 signatures in just 48 hours. It proved the civic attachment to Summerhall was no shallow affair, but a deep-rooted commitment to the venue’s survival that has helped sustain the charity throughout the long sale process.

Reflecting on how communities protect their cultural assets, Gough notes that campaigns to save venues like the Leith Theatre and the Filmhouse proved that collective action could successfully challenge unwanted redevelopment. He also emphasises the importance of institutional allies, pointing out that Summerhall Arts has actively engaged with the Southside Community Council - noting they are ‘the one organisation that the planning (authority) have to consult with.’

In a city where cultural venues rely heavily on public subsidy, Summerhall operates differently. ‘The Trav have got two spaces, Lyceum have got two spaces... they can be busy and book up 18 months in advance,’ says Gough. ‘What we’re doing is different. We have a very different business model.’

Summerhall uses multi-year funding from Creative Scotland strictly to support year-round artistic development. The large-scale Fringe operation is budgeted to break even. Commercial lets and private events fund the remainder.

This approach relies on intelligent space management rather than constant expansion. Gough points out that in 2025, Summerhall deliberately ‘de-grew’ its Fringe programme from 125 shows to 85, closing two venues, yet maintaining the same ticket sales and revenue.

Part of that operational agility lies in how fluidly the site adapts to its tenants. ‘All of the other organisations in there run their businesses and make it work,’ says Gough. ‘Without removing 81% of what is here, we can make it work. We need some things repaired.

‘Viable is the important word. ‘Viable is enough space for us to do the work. It’s affordable enough for us to be able to pay the rent. That to us is what viable is.’

Reading between the developer’s lines

AMA Homes built its business on premium residential developments. Acquiring a multi-tenant arts complex marks a departure from their standard portfolio. The developer has stated an ambition to create a thriving arts quarter (Edinburgh Council’s planning department has made it a condition of any permissions), but Summerhall currently houses over 110 sitting tenants, ranging from independent artists to commercial distillers. Most have no obvious place in AMA’s visions for the future.

Yet whilst locals and this publication frequently point to AMA’s unfulfilled planning obligations at Cramond as poor evidence of any sense of civic responsibility, Gough chooses a measured approach. He prefers to operate in good faith, though he recognises the difference between constructing residential property and managing a creative hub.

‘I’m a great believer that you do business with people and not with organisations,’ says Gough. He prefers to look his counterparts in the eye and expect them to honour their word.

Read more

Three years ago, Nicola Williams was faced with the devastation of losing her husband Mark in a car crash near their Midlothian home, just days after the delighted couple had announced they were expecting another child.

Determined that some good might come out of the tragedy, she is working to support struggling fathers and families navigating difficult circumstances in her late husband’s name.

David Forsyth met her to hear about her latest challenge and what she hopes it might achieve.

More on that below, but first your regular midweek news roundup and your cultural highlights for the week ahead.

Your Edinburgh Briefing

MARVEL(LOUS) CASTING: Former Broughton High School student Ruaridh Mollica is to star in the latest Marvel TV series VisionQuest. The 27-year-old, who started acting with Leith’s Strange Town Youth Theatre, appears alongside Hollywood stars Paul Bettany and James Spader. Ruaridh, who has a first class computing degree from Heriot-Watt University, plays the role of Thomas Sheppard, ‘son’ of the super-powered android Vision.

HIGH NOTES: A collection of rare bank notes handed in to the British Heart Foundation charity shop at Straiton Retail Park proved to be an extraordinary donation. The 160 notes from around the world, including rare examples from Iraq, Borneo and Saudi Arabia, has sold at auction for £85,000.

TACKLING THE TOXIC: Former First Minister Humza Yousaf is to give two lectures at Edinburgh University aimed at helping students navigate political division. Announcing the talks as part of the university’s Common Ground Leadership programme, he warned that public debate in Scotland had become “deeply polarised, and often toxic”.

PRICEY PINTS: Edinburgh has been named the third most expensive university city for a night out in the UK. Sports bars chain Sixes Cricket compared the cost of a night out, including three pints, night club entry, food and a 2-mile taxi home, in 56 university cities and towns. It found prices of between £41.51 and £52.13 in Edinburgh, more than 40 per cent more than the £29.07 in Liverpool, which was ranked cheapest.

MOVIE MAGIC: The Filmhouse has been longlisted for the British Independent Film Awards (Bifa)’s cinema of the year award. More than 50,000 film fans voted to choose the 15 finalists which also include the Bo’ness Hippodrome.

SKIPPER’S NEW ROLE: Former Scotland rugby captain Greig Laidlaw has taken up a role coaching students at Merchiston Castle School in Edinburgh after returning from a spell coaching in Japan. Laidlaw captained Scotland 39 times.

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Your Pick of the (Cultural) Pops

Greetings, Pop Pickers!

With the city still reeling from Paul Hollywood dropping in for a pastry at The Bearded Baker, and the momentous return of the Edinburgh Zoo penguin parade after a 10-month bird flu lockdown, you might think our local stages would struggle to hold their own against such fierce competition. Not so!

Inside our auditoriums, this week’s chart is as fiercely contested as ever. We’ve got an epic storytelling takeover muscling its way to the summit, iconic cinematic restorations scaring up an audience, suffragette hip-hop holding its ground, and last week’s chart-toppers aggressively jostling for position.

Right then, pop pickers - let’s count them down!

Honourable Mentions: Bottom’s Dream, Catherine Opie: To Be Seen & Chunky Jewellery

Bubbling just outside the top five, we have some real gems. Over at the Traverse, we are keeping Bottom’s Dream (October 20th – 24th) close at hand; it finds writer-performer Martin O’Connor joining forces with director Debbie Hannan to give Shakespeare’s famous weaver a fresh spin. Dropping down into the honourables this week is Catherine Opie: To Be Seen (National Galleries of Scotland, until November 1st). It remains one of the most spectacular things on offer in the city right now, but simply makes way for more temporary highlights - don’t be surprised to see this peerless retrospective surge back up the chart in future weeks. Finally, for one night only, you can catch Barrowland Ballet’s Chunky Jewellery (October 21st) at the King’s Theatre - a brutally honest, joyous, and moving physical celebration of friendship and motherhood.

New in at Number 5 is... Halloween at Filmhouse (Filmhouse, October)

Sneaking into the fifth spot is a magnificent cinematic season. There are some genuinely cracking films on offer at the Filmhouse this Halloween - a screening of the timeless Dracula (1931) and a meticulously restored version of The Wicker Man (1973) are my picks of a beautifully curated bunch. Beyond the obvious crowd-pleasers, this programme digs deep into the weird and wonderful corners of cult cinema. From Brian De Palma’s bonkers musical horror Phantom of the Paradise (1974) to the much-lauded 4K restoration of Ken Russell’s deeply controversial and visually staggering The Devils (1971), there is a spooky, celluloid treat for absolutely everyone.

Staying in at Number 4 is... Sylvia (Festival Theatre, until Saturday)

Holding firmly onto the fourth spot is a thoroughly modern musical juggernaut. Kate Prince’s visionary hip-hop, funk, and soul-fuelled take on the suffragette movement is refusing to budge from the chart. With a tremendous cast and riding a massive wave of critical praise from its London run, this revolutionary slice of history - which brilliantly reframes the Pankhurst family’s fierce political fractures - is a guaranteed crowd-pleaser that more than justifies its hype. Catch it while it’s hot!

Falling to Number 3 is... The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Royal Lyceum Theatre, until Sunday)

Slipping down to the bronze medal position is Muriel Spark’s most famous creation. Having now seen this latest theatrical behemoth set sail on its inevitable victory lap around Scottish stages, I must report a slight caveat. Despite some truly marvellous performances and a stunningly executed set design, this adaptation has sacrificed rather too much of Spark’s cynical, religiously underpinned drama on the altar of 21st-century sensibilities. It is definitely one for those perhaps less enamoured of Spark’s merciless nuances, or for whom the novel is a distant memory. You can read my full review on The QR.

Moving up to Number 2 is... Jersey Boys (Edinburgh Playhouse, until Saturday)

Climbing up to snatch the silver medal this week! It is certainly not the first time Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons have marched up the charts, and it’s easy to see why. Interestingly, this will actually be my first time formally reviewing Jersey Boys; in the past, I’ve simply bought a ticket and gone along just to enjoy the show. Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice’s groundbreaking book elevates this far beyond the usual lazy jukebox cash-in, shining a gritty, authentic light on the band’s mob-tied history while treating their iconic songbook with absolute reverence. A slick, harmonic masterclass. Oh, what a night!

• Booking Link: Book via ATG Tickets

New in at Number 1 is... The Scottish International Storytelling Festival (October 21st – 31st)

Straight into the top spot of the pops! Keeping traditional lore and storytelling craft at the vibrant centre of the city’s calendar since 1989, there is nothing quite like the Scottish International Storytelling Festival. This year’s offering is bursting with global and local magic. Highlights include Donald Smith leading two epic three-hour Rewilding Scotland’s Epics sessions, exploring the life of St Columba and the legends of Ossian alongside guests from Scotland and Ireland. Elsewhere, Drut’syla traditional storyteller Shonaleigh collaborates with Turkish storytellers to interweave traditional Anatolian tales with her own inherited ‘Bubbe’s tales’, while Riikka Palonen shares stories from the cow sheds of Finland, and Satu Lankinen explores the traditional Nordic cow-call ‘kulning’. Truly, there is something for everyone!

And that’s your Top 5!

So whether you’re catching a classic horror screening on Lothian Road, revelling in suffragette funk, or losing yourself in epic Celtic legends and slick New Jersey harmonies, our stages are positively bursting with life.

What’s catching your eye on the cultural dance card this week? Think my chart needs a thorough shake-up? Head down to the comments and make your case—right after you’ve snagged those tickets, of course!

Until next week: Stay bright!

‘I couldn’t climb their mountain, so I decided to climb mine’

Grieving mum raising funds to help struggling fathers

by David Forsyth

Ten days from now Nicola Williams will stand at the foot of the highest mountain in the United Arab Emirates to begin an ascent of close to 6500 feet to raise funds for a cause that could not be closer to her heart.

She is hoping that the task will help focus her at a time of year which brings back terrible flashbacks and memories, the time in the calendar she finds most difficult.

Almost certainly she will have tears in her eyes, and not because she knows that the climb she is taking on will involve the risk of heat exhaustion, dehydration, scree fields and steep drops. She will be walking for the husband she loved, taken from her three years ago on October 31 2023, following a head-on road crash.

Mark Williams was a successful young businessman, a keen and expert motorsports driver, and a devoted husband and father. His Range Rover and an Audi crashed near the family home in Midlothian on 28 October. The driver of the other car was killed. Mark suffered severe injuries in died in hospital two days later. A legal case continues.

Only a few days earlier, the overjoyed couple had announced to families and friends that they were expecting another child. A boy, he was later named Mark in honour of his Dad. He now lives in Dubai with his mother, and his older sister Mae, where Nicola moved to make a fresh start.

The Mark Williams Foundation was set up after Mark’s death. At that time, he was the chief executive of NWH Group, a waste management company. Nicola still works with the company and the Williams family businesses, as well as volunteering with the Foundation. The family set up the charity to help fathers and families facing some of the issue which Mark faced during his life.

She said: “October destroys me. I wish there were a softer way to describe it, but there isn’t. Every year, as October approaches, I can feel it coming before the dates even arrives.

“October has become a month of memories, dates, flashbacks and tears. Tears are simply a feature of October now. This year, I have decided to do something different. I can’t change the dates. I can’t change what happened. And I certainly can’t make October stop hurting. But I can give myself a focus.”

So on 25 October she will set out to climb Jebel Jais, the highest mountain in the UAE, straddling the border between Dubai and Oman. “When people hear Jebel Jais, they often think of the road winding high into the Hajar Mountains, the viewing decks, restaurants and the famous zipline. That isn’t what I’m doing.

“We have deliberately planned a significantly more demanding challenge. The route involves around 1,900 metres of ascent through the Hajar Mountains.”

She has been working with a personal trainer to improve her strength and condition, and has also been tackling practice climbs: “We’ll begin before sunrise to avoid as much of the day’s heat as possible. We’ll be climbing for hours with very little natural shade and we’ll need to carry litres of water and electrolytes. Hydration will have to be managed carefully because dehydration, heat exhaustion and heat stroke are very real risks.

“The terrain brings its own challenges too. There are steep ascents, loose rock and scree, uneven limestone, exposed ridgelines, significant drops and remote stretches of mountain. Every metre we climb also has to be walked back down on tired legs, when concentration is lower and loose terrain becomes even more difficult to negotiate safely.”

The idea for the climb actually has its roots firmly in Scotland. In September, supporters of the Mark Williams Foundation including close friends climbed Ben Nevis to raise money for the Foundation, and Nicola could not be with them.

“Anyone who knows me will know there was absolutely no chance I was going to sit this one out. So, if I couldn’t climb their mountain, I decided I would climb mine.”

The Foundation works to help support fathers and families navigating difficult circumstances. Nicola said: “We believe children deserve loving relationships with good fathers, and we want fathers who feel isolated, overwhelmed or completely unsure where to turn to know that somebody is in their corner. We also want to create opportunities for young people with ambition and ideas who perhaps don’t have the connections, mentoring, confidence or support to turn those ideas into something real. That work is already changing lives, and every person we help adds another piece to Mark’s legacy.”

Nicola, who will shortly announce another major climbing challenge she will take on next year, believes there is something fitting in the challenge for her: “There is something about climbing a mountain that feels strangely appropriate. The last three years have felt like that at times. You can’t stand at the bottom and think about every metre ahead of you. Sometimes you just have to take the next step, and then another.”

She plans to set off before sunrise. “I will walk that mountain with a hole in my heart. I’m fairly certain I will cry on it, probably more than once, but I will keep walking.”

• You can read more about the Mark Williams Foundation and its work here.

“It wasn’t making money,” says Jackie Meikle, former manager of Oceana Bar on Ferry Road, which in June closed its doors for the last time after a decade in business. “It’s the way that working man’s pubs go.”

After the final farewell party, Jackie wrote an emotional post on the pub’s Facebook page thanking the regulars for being “the people that made me want to get up in the morning everyday”. She concluded with: “The Oceana now has new owners and will be closed for a refurbishment but those doors will open again it will just be different.”

Less than a month later, a former patron of Oceana shared a photo of a poster in the pub’s window announcing that it would soon become The Coalyard Tap, a sister pub to the Old Eastway Tap and Portobello Tap. The caption read: “We will have a Yuppie pub 🤣🤣🤣”.

Leith has become a prime high street location in recent years. It is home to three of Edinburgh’s seven Michelin starred restaurants, four of its seven craft breweries, and boasts independent bookshops capable of fending off the likes of Waterstones.

To some onlookers, these “yuppie” businesses are another hallmark of gentrification; a symptom of a neighbourhood gradually pricing out its residents.

But how much of the changes to Leith’s business environment is gentrification, and how much reflects wider economic changes? How exactly has the mixture of businesses changed in recent years? Are we actually seeing long-standing, cheap shops and cafes replaced by pricey newcomers? And most importantly, what do business owners themselves, as well as resident Leithers, think of the changing face of Leith Walk, the Shore and Ferry Road?

In a two-part series, we have been trying to dig beneath the surface of the generalised “gentrification” label, to understand what life in Leith is like, and how it’s changing. You can read our first part, focussing on living in Leith, here. For this second installment, we spoke to business owners and managers in the rapidly changing port district.

Read more

It’s not a race – but if it had been we’d have lost. The ongoing repair work taking place behind the enormous and unsightly scaffolding on the historic corner of the Royal Mile and George IV Bridge has taken longer than repairing the fire-ravaged Notre Dame Cathedral.

It still isn’t finished after more than six years and counting to fix a hotel that was built less than two decades ago.

Despite our best efforts, and in in response to several readers who’ve asked, we’ve been unable to determine whether the project remains on track to complete in 2027, with scaffolding starting to come down by the end of this year.

Notre Dame, which also sits in a World Heritage Site, reopened five years after the catastrophic fire in 2019 destroyed its massive roof, spire and caused huge internal damage. That massive effort included having to source 1000 historic oak trees to hand-hew the medieval roof framework, a task involving 2000 craftsmen and artisans.

Quicker to build than fix: The former G&V Hotel in Edinburgh has now taken more than twice as long to repair than it did to demolish the former Lothian Regional Council offices that stood on the site and construct the existing building. Experts tell us the normal timeline for a full refurbish of a hotel of this size (originally 130 bedrooms) is between nine and 18 months.

Go compare: So far, it has taken more than four years longer to fix than it did to build the Empire State Building; a year longer than it took to construct the enormous Hoover Dam, and equally as long as it took to complete each of the Forth Road Bridge and the Queensferry Crossing.

Why is it taking so long? We don’t know entirely. We’re told the repairs that were initially expected to take 12 months were more complex than anticipated, but no-one has ever explained to the city’s population precisely why. In October last year, we trawled council documents to shed light on it all. Fire safety issues, including cladding replacement, appear to have been a big part of the problems. It is likely that negotiations have taken place between the owners, city-based financial giant Aberdeen, the original contractors, and hotel operators Radisson Collection about who is responsible and pays for it all.

No clear end date yet: Our most recent effort has failed to extract a public commitment to any completion date is perhaps unsurprising given that when we first raised the issue at the start of 2025 we – and local councillors – were led to believe that dismantling the scaffolding was due to start within weeks.

Owners Aberdeen only told us: “We understand the frustrations felt by local residents and businesses and are working with the original contractor Sir Robert McAlpine on essential repairs to the building. This has been a lengthy and protracted process, reflecting the complexity and scale of the remedial work required; however we are focused on completing this essential work as soon as is practicable.”

Huge disruption: Residents and businesses have expressed concern at the length of time the work has taken. Award-winning seafood restaurant Ondine decamped from its site in the building after failing to get any firm reassurance on completion of the work. Andrew McRae, owner of John Kay’s bookshop in Victoria Street, told the Edinburgh News of the difficulties of running a business close to the work, saying: “I’m absolutely horrified it now seems to be a never-ending construction project.”

What about the council? The site on which the hotel was built is owned by the city council, although the building is not, and its repair and maintenance is not the council’s responsibility. Two city council leaders, Cammy Day then Jane Meagher, have publicly expressed frustration at the time the work is taking. Today, councillor Stephen Jenkinson, Transport and Environment Convener, told The Inquirer: “I completely understand how frustrating these works are for residents and local businesses, and I appreciate the disruption they are causing. We’re continuing to press the owners and contractors to progress the works and bring the project to completion at the earliest possible opportunity.”

YOUR EDINBURGH BRIEFING

TEARS AND DISCO: There were tears and a disco music soundtrack as Elsinore, the eagerly-anticipated biopic of Edinburgh actor Ian Charlseon, opened the BFI London Film Festival. Charleson’s sister Lizzie joined the film’s star Andrew Scott on stage where he described her as a “wonderful new friend”. Scott is widely tipped to pick up the Best Actor Oscar for his performance as Charleson when he starred in Hamlet as he was dying of AIDS.

‘REPAIR, NOT DEMOLISH’: Summerhall Arts, the charity which programmes arts at the venue facing major redevelopment, has raised concerns about developer AMA’s plans for the site. Stressing it recognises the need for investment and that it wants a constructive relationship with AMA, the charity added: “We are concerned the current plans appear to earmark some of Summerhall’s most distinctive spaces for demolition… Their loss would have implications for the arts activity that takes place across the site… We believe the potential for repair, renovation and continued cutural use deserves serious consideration.”

BALACLAVA BAN: The city’s Conservatives and Ben Macpherson, the SNP MSP for Edinburgh North Eastern and Leith, are among those calling for police to be handed more powers to deal with growing problems of anti-social behaviour involving yobs wearing balaclavas. They point to Nottingham which has introduced new powers to order people to remove a face covering where their identity is being hidden to commit crime or behave antisocially. Scotland’s Minister for Victims Kirsten Oswald said she needed to see “clear evidence that additional measures are necessary, practical and effective” as Police Scot land believes its current powers are sufficient.

GREEN FOUR GO: Four of the city’s Green councillors are to stand down at next May’s local elections. Claire Miller (who represents the city centre), Jule Bandel (Inverleith), Susan Rae (Leith Walk) and newly-elected MSP Kayleigh Kinross-O’Neill (who represents the Forth ward on the council). The party, which has been tipped to increase its presence on the council in May, has started the process of choosing new candidates.

VIVA ENRAGE: Staff working at the Scottish Government’s huge Victoria Quay offices have reportedly nicknamed its Viva Engage staff message board Viva Enrage. It comes after civil servants were told to return to the office for at least 40% of their working week. Unhappiness about the move has been exacerbated by the Scottish Government’s Social Security Director Stephen Kerr telling them they are ‘free to leave if they don’t like it’, The Scotsman reports.

7-7-7 BUS LANE TRIAL: The trial of 7am-7pm bus lane enforcement 7-days-a-week starts today on the route between Milton Road East and London Road. Bus journey times on the route have increased by 22% since 2019. Data from the 18-month trial will be used to decide whether to make the change permanent and help inform decisions on rolling out the measure in other parts of the city.

FIRST RESORT: Lost Shore Surf Resort just west of Edinburgh has been chosen by GB Surfing as one of its National Performance Centres and Olympic training facilities – strengthening the award-winning centre’s role in the sport in Europe. The partnership will give GB Surfing athletes access to the centre’s leading wave pool and wider facilities.

RARE LITTLE TEAPOT: An incredibly rate silver-plated teapot is to be sold by Edinburgh auctioneers Lyon & Turnbull on Wednesday, The angular teapot will go under the hammer, valued at £30,000 - £50,000 on the first day of the two-day Design Since 1860 auction which celebrates creativity and craftsmanship from the late nineteenth century to the Modern era.

HIBS HISTORY: Hibs fans can enjoy some free reading following the release of a new book about the club in the 1990s: (What’s the Story) Goals and Glory? The book by author and journalist Colin Leslie is the long-awaited sequel to the 1980s hardback Bestie to Beastie to Belgium published in 2021. The book is being released digitally in three parts, then as a complete print edition next Spring. You can download and read the first part now, which cover the attempted takeover of Hibs by Wallace Mercer and the successful Hands Off Hibs campaign, at buymeacoffee.com/hibs90s/extras

Pics of the week

THE BUSINESS

Heriot-Watt seeks to raise £35 million to build new centre of excellence

Heriot-Watt University is looking to raise around £35 million, including Scottish Government support, to create a new Centre for Advanced Brewing and Distilling which could generate an additional £53.4 million per year for the Scottish economy.

A new BiGGAR Economics economic impact assessment for the University today provides an analysis of the potential of a new centre, which would build on the success of the institution’s acclaimed International Centre for Brewing and Distilling.

And the report maintains that within ten years, the new Centre could be generating a total economic impact of £324.8m GVA per year for Scotland, helping support thousands of jobs.

In order to build the new CABD, Heriot-Watt is looking to unlock £25.3m from industry as well as £9.7m in public investment. In terms of the latter figure, BiGGAR’s assessment states the CABD could deliver £20.80 of economic benefit for every £1 of public funding invested.

Finding Solutions

Currently the alcohol sector employs 60,000 people, representing 2.4% of all jobs in Scotland, 14,000 or 71% of the UK’s distilling jobs, and a GVA per head across the distilling of spirits and manufacturing of beer sub-sectors of £240,730.

However, the assessment states that the ICBD’s ability to sustain its current level of success is under threat and a new CABD would help sustain and develop Scotland’s brewing and distilling sectors as well as drive innovation to meet the new challenges of the 21^st century, which include meeting brewing and distilling’s commitment to reach net zero by 2040; tackling the large volumes of water used to create Scotch whisky in particular; maintaining their competitiveness by finding solutions to the current rising input costs – from 2020 to 2025 they increased by 37%; and tackling the current skills shortage across the sectors.

Professor Chris Turney, Deputy Principal of Research and Innovation at Heriot-Watt University, said: “BiGGAR Economics’ independent assessment provides a huge vote of confidence in our vision for a new Centre for Advanced Brewing and Distilling. To be located right next to the National Robotarium, the new centre will deliver real, tangible benefits for brewing and distilling and the wider supply chain that depends on them.”

Graduates of the university’s International Centre for Brewing and Distilling have founded nearly 30 of Scotland’s active brewing and distilling businesses. In 2024 to 2025 alone, those businesses added an estimated £79.4 million to the Scottish economy and supported the creation of 520 jobs.

Ewan Andrew, Diageo’s President Global Supply Chain & Procurement and Chief Sustainability Officer and co-chair of Heriot-Watt’s CABD fundraising committee, said: “What this economic impact assessment demonstrates is the potential value to Scotland and the UK that Heriot-Watt University can deliver with a commitment from government to back this new world-class facility.”

SOARAWAY ST JAMES: The apparently ever-increasing success of Edinburgh’s Westfield St James Quarter continues apace. Four new arrivals due to open soon are women’s athleisure brand TALA (2,490 sq ft), Italian fashion label Subdued (1,992 sq ft), Danish outerwear specialist Rains (1,805 sq ft) and Australian fashion jewellery brand Harli + Harpa (893 sq ft). Westfield St James Quarter recorded 20.6 million visits last year, and since it opened has been the prime factor in driving Edinburgh’s move up the industry’s CACA’s Retail Footprint ranking from 15^th place to sixth.

OFFICE READY: An office building that overlooks Haymarket Station is now ready for occupation following improvement work. A refurbishment at 65 Haymarket Terrace includes new air conditioning, LED lighting, new shower and locker room facilities and secure bicycle storage. The building is owned by a client of CBRE Investment Management and marketed by Knight Frank.

BUYING GIFT FIRM: Edinburgh-based digital voucher platform SK Chase, which works with hundreds of the world’s leading hotels, restaurants and resorts to allow them to sell gift experiences, has been acquired by London-headquartered SME payment solutions business ClearCourse.

THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT

TELL US A STORY: The Scottish International Storytelling Festival brings artists from around the world to the Royal Mile’s Storytelling Centre from 21-31 October. If you want your appetite whetted, read Will Quinn’s interview with new festival director Daniel Abercrombie here.

AMAZING AGATHA: Celebrate the legacy of the word’s most famous crime writer Agatha Christie in style, with host Amanda Ross, actor and director Ben Miller and bestselling author Lucy Foley, who’s been trusted by the author’s estate to write a brand new Miss Marple novel Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel. Between the covers live: Celebrating Agatha Christie is at the Queen’s Hall tomorrow night.

PINTS OF KNOWLEDGE: Want to know Why you should care about sports politics in the 21st century?, then join Dr Ben Coulson at Malones in Haymarket on Sunday. He is guest speaker at the latest Pints of Knowledge lecture at the pub at 12pm-2pm.

QUICK BITES

RICKS RETURNS: A popular name is returning to Frederick Street this month. To allow refurbishment by Montpeliers Group restaurant and bar Rabble is to close from 19-31 October, before re-opening as Ricks, which previously operated a boutique hotel, restaurant and cocktail bar.

NEW CLASH: Clash Bar & Restaurant has opened as a new addition to Edinburgh’s food and drink scene. Located within NYX Hotel on Jeffrey Street, Clash brings together South American-inspired dishes, house cocktails and live DJ sessions.

They are to all appearances unremarkable patches of ground on street corners across the north of Edinburgh.

But these spaces, scraps of land that you and I might walk past each day without noticing, are in fact part of a remarkable quest to revive one of our most ancient traditions - making bread out of grain grown on our doorstep, writes Emma Newlands.

Lauriston Farm is today (Saturday October 10) welcoming visitors to see the fruits of several years of work across the north of Edinburgh to revive an ancient Scottish grain locally.

The 100-acre farm, on the northern outskirts of the capital, is running guided tours to promote its efforts to bring the wheat variety known as Rouge D’Ecosse back into sustainable production.

Visitors can buy some Rouge D’Ecosse flour, after the farm recently received its first batch, made from wheat grown onsite this year.

Kate MacDougall, from the Edinburgh Agroecology Co-op, which rents the farm from the city council, is delighted to see the project reaching such a key milestone. “It’s exciting. It’s quite emotional, bringing that flour in,” she tells The Edinburgh Inquirer. “It feels like we’re getting closer to something that has been the dream for a long time.”

The revival of Rouge D’Ecosse in Edinburgh is the result of years of painstaking work by many in the community to cultivate and then replant it in increasing quantities. Others have been bringing it back to life across Scotland, at Mungoswells in East Lothian, for example, and the UK.

Records show it was grown in East Lothian in the 1800s, and later across Scotland - but it then disappeared as more industrial wheat production took over.

The Scottish Government in its Good Food Nation Plan published in December 2025 stated that “much of Scotland’s wheat is unsuitable for breadmaking due to climatic constraints and is therefore used primarily as animal feed, while higher-quality bread wheat is imported”.

However, in a typical year only around 15 per cent of the wheat used by UK flour millers is imported, according to UK Flour Millers.

Rouge D’Ecosse is believed to have been granted its moniker by renowned Paris grain merchant Henry de Vilmorin, who catalogued it alongside other key wheats in a landmark 1880 publication.

It is recognised in the Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity’s Ark of Taste, which collates small-scale quality food products at risk of disappearing.

And Rouge D’Ecosse is also classed as a Heritage Landrace Grain, a category developed to grow without chemicals. Its other key characteristics include being resistant to being dislodged by poor weather, and able to tolerate great cold - both handy when trying to thrive in Granton’s damp and chilly climes.

A pivotal moment in bringing it back to the soils and kitchen tables of Edinburgh was the formation in 2012 of Scotland The Bread, an organisation aiming to “grow better grain and bake better bread with the common purposes of nourishment, sustainability and food sovereignty”.

The goals of the organisation, now known as Bread for Good Community Benefit Society, also included tracking down and bringing back Rouge D’Ecosse. It worked with Brockwell Bake Association which searched seed banks around the world. Plant science specialist the John Innes Centre then germinated the handful of located seeds.

Troops assembled in Edinburgh in the form of small-scale farmers and community growers, with Granton Community Gardeners getting the Rouge D’Ecosse from Scotland the Bread in 2015 and sowing the seeds on street corners. Participants saved and re-planted more seeds every year.

“It became quite normal to walk around Granton housing estates, and there was wheat growing [there],” says MacDougall.

Lauriston Farm then took the baton. It took several years to produce enough Rouge D’Ecosse to send off for milling. “In 2026, the team hit the magic number of three acres - enough to start selling the flour to local people, and supplying Granton Garden Bakery.”

MacDougall notes that it is not all that long since a native grain would have been farmed, milled, and baked locally - and it is only thanks to the “huge” collective effort of a “very dynamic” local community that Rouge D’Ecosse has been brought back to life.

The project dovetails with an increased focus by consumers on locally produced artisanal products that have a clear, ethical, and sustainable provenance - and are healthier than mass-produced equivalents.

The Scottish Government has also been seeking to increase both organic farmland, and the proportion of locally produced food consumed by the public sector.

At the same time, the Covid pandemic and conflict in Ukraine and the Middle East have made consumers far more aware of the potential precariousness of the international food supply chain.

MacDougall says the mission to revive Rouge D’Ecosse has really struck a chord with those helping to cultivate it, with more and more saying “that feels important, that feels exciting, that feels like something I want to be part of”.

The initiative is part of Edinburgh Agroecology Co-op’s aim to tackle the growing challenges of climate change, biodiversity collapse, and lack of access to healthy, fresh and affordable food.

Lauriston’s first batch of flour was milled at Lapwing Mill in Aberdeen, but Granton Garden Bakery is working on setting up its own mill to grow and mill the wheat locally - a move that will be enabled by a move to The Pitt, which will give it the required space, says MacDougall.

“Small mills are beginning to come back now, and that changes what’s possible for small-scale growing,” says MacDougall.

Edinburgh’s bid to give an ancient grain a new lease of life is part of this broader trend, and Lauriston Farm says the network of heritage grain growers and bakers is growing, with “exciting” initiatives across the UK.

They include the Real Bread Campaign, which launched in 2008. Its aims include all bread being free of pesticides and other agrochemicals “because all grain, particularly wheat, will be grown by biodynamic, certified organic or other low-to-no-input farming”.

Also on the list is micronutritional values and flavour of grain being valued as much as yield and protein levels.

Analysis by what was then Scotland the Bread found that Rouge D’Ecosse is higher in minerals such as calcium, manganese, and iron than typical modern grain varieties.

A key mission of Lauriston Farm is to get nutrient-rich food on the plates of local communities, many of whom face poverty - which hampers their access to healthy food. Local charity Edinburgh Food Project said in its 2025/26 annual report that it provided 17,870 food parcels during the year.

Bread is the ages-old bedrock of meals and communities the world over, and MacDougall says this taps into something fundamental. “People get excited about the grains. It does move people, it’s a beloved staple.” The key part it plays in our diet was highlighted when First Minister John Swinney recently announced controversial plans for it to be among a list of key grocery items subject to a price cap.

Laurison Farm is looking to scale its production of vegetables, and bring in pulses, as well as possibly other grains such as oats.

“We’re looking at being very mixed in terms of what we produce,” says MacDougall.

Saturday’s tour will touch on this broader aim, as well as on the site’s community allotments, wildlife habitat areas, and land partners such as Rhyze Mushrooms Co-op.

MacDougall adds that the Rouge D’Ecosse project is crucial, and shows that producing food locally stymies the climate, nature, and health crisis issues that all “collide” in the current global food system where quantity is prized over quality.

“The opportunity is within the problem… the food system is the place where you can make an enormous difference. You relate to the food in a different way, because it really is from here, and it really does belong to the community,” says MacDougall.

That said, reviving Rouge D’Ecosse has been far from straightforward, she adds. The many hurdles have included finding machinery suitable for smaller-scale production, and getting in line with associated rules and regulations.

Funding is also a key consideration, with the farm toiling to ensure it can balance the books while achieving a key objective of making its produce affordable. “We need to find more sponsorship or grant funding to keep it going at the moment,” adds MacDougall.

However, the importance of the farm’s pivotal work to again see Rouge D’Ecosse rising above the ground and milled into bags of flour is garnering prestigious praise.

The Soil Association Scotland’s farming lead Colleen McCulloch tells The Edinburgh Inquirer: “This batch of flour represents a significant milestone in developing diverse and resilient localised supply chains, which produce nutritionally dense food from crops adapted to the landscape, and rooted in the communities they feed.

“Projects like this and the Innovative Farmers Flax Field Lab which took place on Lauriston Farm [to help re-establish a regenerative textile supply chain in the UK] can help rebuild the connection between what we grow, how it is grown and processed and supporting healthy soils and biodiversity.”

For today’s long read we return to Summerhall, as developers AMA unveil their plans for the former Royal Dick Vet School.

Given AMA’s failure to deliver on its promises to deliver sports facilities in Cramond, their proposals for the future of the sprawling ‘arts village’ on the edge of the Meadows were always going to be the subject of intense scrutiny.

As they began their consultation at the site yesterday, Jolene Campbell went along to learn more about the plans and how they are going down with those living and working in and around the site.

She also took the opportunity to talk to AMA founder Mike Afshar about the doubts being expressed about his plans and he told her about the “big risk” he is taking.

More on that below, but first your regular midweek news roundup and your cultural highlights for the week ahead.

Your Edinburgh Briefing

CALEY FAREWELL: Demolition work is underway on the former Caledonian Brewery site to make way for its redevelopment as 163 “low-carbon” flats. The brewery closed in 2022 after 153 years in Slateford. Artisan Real Estate is demolishing some buildings and converting others to create a “sustainable neighbourhood” with just two on-site parking spaces.

GRANTON BEGINNINGS: First Minister John Swinney has visited the Granton Waterfront to mark the start of construction work on 847 Net Zero homes, including 387 classed as affordable, and a new primary school. The development, described as one of Scotland’s largest Net Zero housing developments, is part of the wider £1.3 billion transformation of the waterfront to provide 3,500 homes, new leisure facilities and Scotland’s largest coastal park.

WORLD’S FIRST ‘TALKIE’: Historian Marc David Jacobs has uncovered evidence that the world’s first-ever talking feature film was screened in Edinburgh rather than the US. Glasgow playwright Graham Moffat created a 45-minute feature film of his play Till the Bells Ring which was screened in the capital a full year before Al Jolson’s famous 1927 film The Jazz Singer. It was shown at Poole’s Synod Hall, on Castle Terrace, which was demolished in the 1960s.

BACK TO THE OFFICE: The capital’s civil servants have been told they must spend at least 40 per cent of their working hours in the office in a new ‘back to the office’ push by the Scottish Government. Senior civil servants will need to spend spend at least 60 per cent of their time in the office, with all staff required to use a new self-reporting tool to record where they are working from.

OR A BIG PAY-OFF? Senior civil servants are being offered a generous one month’s pay for each year of service (up to a maximum of 21 months) to take voluntary redundancy as part of the Scottish Government’s public sector reforms, Kieran Andrews of The Times reports. The deal is open to officials on C band or above, with starting salaries above £62,000, with pay-off of more than £95,000 needing to be signed-off by Scottish Government Ministers.

Your Pick of the (Cultural) Pops

Greetings, Pop Pickers!

The autumn winds are blowing, and so too are the icy draughts of developer ambition. Word has landed that AMA has applied for a ‘partial’ demolition (and redevelopment) of Summerhall. The cynically-minded might spot the phrase ‘student housing’ in the proposals and anticipate disaster, but hope springs eternal, I suppose. On a lighter note, the celebrity edition of The Traitors has returned to our screens, offering keen-eyed viewers a glorious chance to catch the inevitable slew of dramatic television moments before they are ruthlessly repurposed into panto-schtick later in the year. Yes, indeed!

Inside our auditoriums, this week’s chart is in constant flux. We’ve got revolutionary suffragette hip-hop and slick West End jukebox heavyweights shaking up the established order, an overdue visual arts retrospective finally muscling its way into the upper echelons, and last week’s number one battling to fend off a ferocious wave of fresh contenders.

Right then, pop pickers - let’s count them down!

Honourable Mentions: West Side Story, Bear with Me & Bottom’s Dream

Bubbling just outside the top five, we have some real gems. Our fourth-place finisher from last week, the RSNO’s magnificent West Side Story (Usher Hall, Friday), slips into the honourables today—not through any fault of its own, but due to the strength of incoming shows demanding a place on the chart. Over at the Scottish Storytelling Centre, expect some ursine Scandinavian magic as Bear with Me (Sunday) continues the venue’s wonderful Easy Sundays series, essentially providing a story-filled, easy-going living room for the city every two weeks. Meanwhile, A Play, a Pie and a Pint serves up Bottom’s Dream (Traverse Theatre, October 20th – 24th); it finds writer-performer Martin O’Connor—fresh from reprising his hit Through the Shortbread Tin with the NTS—joining forces with Debbie Hannan, one of the country’s most vibrant directors, to give Shakespeare’s famous weaver a fresh spin.

Falling to Number 5 is... The Steamie (King’s Theatre, until Saturday)

Slipping two spots to number five is Tony Roper’s beloved Glasgow washhouse comedy. You only have a couple more nights to catch this joyful, hilarious celebration of Hogmanay blethers before it packs up the wagons and journeys onto another stage. If you fancy a night of warmth, laughter, and a few tears in the newly refurbished King’s, do not hang about. The curtain comes down on Saturday! By the time you read this, The Quinntessential Review’s Sass MacDonald will have reviewed the show, so if you’re still unsure, go catch her verdict.

New in at Number 4 is... Sylvia (Festival Theatre, October 13th – 17th)

Bursting straight into fourth place is a roving powerhouse. Arriving on a wave of critical praise and boasting the tremendous cast that led its 2023 London premiere - including Beverley Knight reprising her Olivier Award-winning turn as Emmeline Pankhurst alongside Sharon Rose as the titular Sylvia - this hip-hop, funk, and soul-fuelled suffragette musical is a sure-fire crowd-pleaser. Kate Prince’s visionary production turns the battle for women’s suffrage into a gripping family civil war, pitting Sylvia’s fight for working-class women against her mother Emmeline’s militant crusade. Look for this energetic, revolutionary piece of history to become an absolute staple of the UK touring circuit in the years to come - so catch its original form while you still can!

New in at Number 3 is... Jersey Boys (Edinburgh Playhouse, October 12th – 17th)

Snatching the bronze medal is one of my absolute personal favourites. Jersey Boys didn’t spend so many years dominating Broadway and the West End on the sheer strength of the Frankie Valli songbook alone. While most jukebox musicals might lazily dial it in for some easy box-office dough, Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice’s book was groundbreaking when it debuted. It shines a genuinely fresh, gritty light on the Four Seasons’ history while giving the royal treatment to those iconic tunes. If it didn’t tour quite so regularly, it would undoubtedly place higher, but there are some rare confections occupying the top spots this week. Oh, what a night!

Overdue at Number 2 is... Catherine Opie: To Be Seen (National Galleries of Scotland, until November 1st)

Taking the silver medal - and frankly, it should have made it into my rankings back in August when it began - is this spectacularly curated retrospective. I only caught it recently, and boy, is it one not to miss. Opie has been pushing the envelope on who gets to be represented in art for three decades, capturing the spirit of her subjects with a rare gift for the lens and an old master’s instinct for framing. The 13 works Opie has picked from Scotland’s national collection to sit alongside her own photography look perfectly at home with their modern neighbours. Truly exceptional stuff? Not ‘arf!

Staying at Number 1 is... The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Royal Lyceum Theatre, October 2nd – 18th)

Holding fast at the top of the pops for a second week, there is absolutely no avoiding this theatrical behemoth. Muriel Spark’s iconic Edinburgh novel, brought to life by Gayle Rankin and a formidable creative team, is dominating the cultural conversation. By the time I return to tell you all what to see next week, I’ll have formally reviewed it. Can the formidable Miss Brodie survive first contact and retain the number one spot? Time will tell.

And that’s your Top 5!

So whether you’re catching the final washhouse blethers at the King’s, revelling in suffragette funk at the Festival Theatre, singing along with Frankie Valli, or soaking in Catherine Opie’s peerless portraiture before paying court to Miss Brodie, your diary ought to be groaning at the seams.

What’s taking the top spot on your own cultural dance card this week? Think my chart needs a thorough shake-up? Head down to the comments and make your case - right after securing those tickets, of course!

Until next week: Stay bright!

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The future of Summerhall: ‘Arts provision here needs to be guaranteed’

Artists, residents and commnity leaders seek assurances as developers unveil their plans for ‘Europe’s biggest arts village’

by Jolene Campbell

Residents, artists and community leaders have called on developers to “keep their promise” to put arts at the heart of Summerhall as they revealed the first details of their plans to redevelop the site of the arts venue.

Property developer AMA (New Town) Limited launched their public consultation yesterday on their plans for a mixed-use development, comprising arts and community space, alongside food and drink venues, business space, and hotel and student accommodation.

The company say their vision is to retain a “thriving arts quarter” on the site. However, artist’s impressions of the proposals submitted by AMA, appear to show buildings currently housing art and music studios, small businesses and charities, disappearing as part of plans. AMA says it intends to demolish some of the buildings as part of the redevelopment.

One of the architects told The Inquirer there would need to be “some reduction” in the arts spaces, but at this stage there is little detail of what that might look like. AMA founder Mike Afshar in turn told The Inquirer he was taking “a big risk” but was confident he can deliver on the promise of arts provision.

Yesterday’s consultation launch, in the sprawing complex that has been described as Europe’s biggest arts village, was a first chance for the local community to learn more about AMA’s plans and ask questions of the developers.

Overall, there was widespread support among those in attendance for investment in the site, particulary the main Summerhall building which recently saw a ceiling collapse after a Fringe show.

However, there was equally widespread scepticism about whether AMA would deliver on its vision of a long-term future for the arts on the site.

The scepticism is fuelled by ongoing problems at AMA‘S Cramond Campus development where promises to deliver community sports facilities have still to be delivered more than 20 years later.

The development plans come amid uncertainty for arts spaces across the city, following the news that more than 200 artists and community groups have been served eviction notices for St Margarets House ahead of its impending sale.

Among those keen to learn more about the plans was local resident Frank Gribben. “Development is good because the site is deteriorating, but I’m sceptical to the point of being untrusting about the arts element of the plans. It looks like a tag on to drum up investment for the commercial parts. So much of the arts is for the more affluent. Why can’t we protect these grittier spaces?” he said.

“In the absence of a credible arts partner, it seems unlikely they will deliver the arts element. There is a risk it could end up being just a hotel and student housing. If they had a national organisation on board, a music promoter or major theatre group, it would seem more real.

“It needs to be insisted upon. Otherwise, this could end up being another major public asset that gets turned into housing for rich people, just like the Sick Kids.”

Luxury housing developers AMA has submitted a pre-application notice outlining its plans for the site, which has become a key Fringe venue since opening in the former vet school campus 15 years ago.

The four development options put forward by AMA.

• All four earmark the historic main building as an arts centre.

• The open space behind it would be either an “arts courtyard” with a pub facing on to it, or general amenity space.

• The TechCube tower at the front of the site would be either a hotel, student flats or offices/commercial space.

• The buildings behind them would be a combination of hotel or hotels, student flats, or serviced apartments depending on the option taken forward.

• Commerical units would run along the back of the site.

Option 1

Option 2

Option 3

Option 4

City centre councillor Finlay MacFarlane echoed the concerns among the arts community.

“People come here to see shows but what’s at stake is so much bigger. I have friends who use the space and make a living here. It’s a chaotic blend of artists, businesses, charities. There is no doubt changes should be made, like improving accessibility, but I don’t believe PBSA (Purpose-Built Student Accomodation) is right for the space.

“What has already been created here is special and deserves to be protected.”

He pointed to the example of the Filmhouse which was set to be turned into a pub before a wave of public support led to the venue reopening with the support of public fund-raising and a benevolent owner.

“It set a precedent and people in the city were thankful. I hope AMA will do the same. People need to have their voices heard. The arts provision here needs to be a guarantee not just a promise.”

One of the problems at the Cramond Campus development is that planning conditions insisting the sports provision was delivered before all the housing was built was waived by the city council after work got underway.

‘There’s a real synergy here’

Costa Talalaev runs a prototyping company based at the Hack Lab, which would be demolished under plans. He doesn’t know where he would go if the building were demolished. Currently his rent is £360 per month.

He said some of those based on the site are worried that if AMA are successful in getting planning permission for their proposals, they could hike up the rents.

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If Sir Peter Mathieson’s impending departure was intended to calm troubled waters at Edinburgh University, there is little sign it has had the desired effect.

By the time he steps down in 2028, he will have served as the university’s principal and vice-chancellor for a decade that has been marked largely by expansion - student numbers up from around 42,000 to 50,000 and an annual budget swollen from £1bn to nearly £1.5bn - and industrial strife. (The current strikes came far from out of the blue as we reported last year Why are things turning sour at Edinburgh University?.)

His decision not to seek a third term as principal - that would have taken him past his 73rd birthday - was not surprising, but its timing was inevitably political, writes Louise Nethercott and Matthew Leslie.

As he made the announcement to the University Court, students and striking staff and were chanting and protesting outside.

The protests won’t phase a man who previously served as principal of the University of Hong Hong during highly-charged pro-democracy student protests.

He has made clear his intention to see out the final 16 months of his current term. That will mean seeing through the £150m cuts to its annual budget that he insists are necessary, despite there being “no deficit”, to put the institution on a firm financial footing.

He will do so, not just in the face of opposition from striking academics, and their supporters among their student, but a growing cast of protesters including film stars and theatre directors.

The latest controversy, sparked by the announcement more than 90 degree programmes are to be “taught out” and closed to new entrants, has seen the dispute reach new heights of enmity.

So what is going on at the university and what will these latest cuts mean for the university and its students?

‘A firestorm of misinformation’

More than half of the degree programmes facing closure (48 out of the more than 90) are from the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures (LLC).

Professor Alex Thompson, head of LLC, has defended the move as consolidating courses with low uptake while offering the subjects within other degree programmes.

Many have criticised the decision to cut programmes, particularly the closure of Scottish Literature and Celtic studies, claiming the university is ‘abandoning Scottish culture and its students’.

Robert Irvine, reader in Scottish Literary History, sent out an email to undergraduate students in the English and Scottish literature department, condemning the “extraordinary full-spectrum firestorm of misinformation” featured in many media report.

He told The Edinburgh Inquirer that while certain degree programmes, such as Scottish Literature and Scottish Literature and Scottish History are being closed, this does not mean the courses and content these degrees offer will stop.

Irvine spelled out the difference between these two terms to help clear up some of the confusion and false claims. Programmes refer to the title of the degree - or the “name on the box” - while courses describe the elements that are taught within those programmes - “everything in that box”.

Scottish Literature is set to be axed as a programme, so no graduates after the current course will leave Edinburgh University with a degreed in Scottish Literature. However, this does not mean the content within the programme is being stopped. It will be available within different degrees, or programmes. In the context of budget cuts, he says this will not save any money, “there’s nobody to sack”.

An MA in English and Scottish Literature will allow students to study just as much Scottish Literature as the single honours programme, with 50% of seminars focused on the subject, Irvine said.

Responding to claims this would make Glasgow University the only institution in the country offering Scottish Literature on its own, Irvine let out a frustrated sigh.

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Edinburgh has achieved a remarkable public transport double with the city’s buses and trams both being named the best in the UK.

Lothian Buses has been recognised as the UK’s best bus operator and Edinburgh Trams separately triumphed in the light rail category at the National Transport Awards in London. It is the second time in three years the capital has carried off both these titles.

The achievement is all the more impressive as the awards compare the performance of publicly-owner and private operators, rather than just comparing local authority services.

The success was largely driven by growing passenger numbers on both the buses and trams, as well as investment in electric buses and service improvements such as the trams’ Tap On, Tap Off payment system.

Sarah Boyd, chief executive of Lothian Group, which oversees both Lothian Buses and Edinburgh Trams, made it a hat-trick by picking up the industry’s Woman of the Year award at the same ceremony.

Anything Andy can do… It’s not all about Manchester. The Bee Network in Manchester has been held up as a model for municipal bus services following Andy Burnham’s elevation to Prime Minister. Its £2 single fare cap is being rolled out across much of the UK, with Edinburgh among the places it is due to be introduced, although no date has yet been set for that. The awards, however, are a reminder that Edinburgh has been leading the field for years.

What makes Edinburgh so special? The capital has consistently achieved some of the highest rates of public transport use in the UK. Around three-quarters of city residents regularly use Lothian Buses for journeys around Edinburgh, compared to half using a car, according to one IPSOS study. Edinburgh was unusual in sticking with publicly-owned bus services when most UK cities went private. That has meant continued investment over a number of years in a high-quality bus network, with the trams now also overseen by the same council-owned company which directs the buses.

In numbers: More than 130 million passenger journeys were taken on the buses and trams last year. That’s more than 350,000 a day, with just over 90% of them taken on the buses. Passenger numbers increased on both networks by around 3%.

Happy customers and well-trained drivers: Transport Focus's 2025 Your Bus Journey survey gives Lothian Buses 94% overall passenger satisfaction. Lothian Buses driver-training school achieved a 94.6% pass rate, compared with an industry average of 61.5%, while training more than 450 drivers in a year.

Record day: Edinburgh The trams have come into their own during major events at Murrayfield, setting a record for the most passengers in a day (just under 77,000) when Oasis played during last summer’s Fringe.

Anything else? Lothian Buses has been praised for its charity work, including promoting Age Scotland’s helpline and loneliness services, and helped raise nearly £30,000 by donating unclaimed lost property to be sold in Shelter Scotland shops.

YOUR EDINBURGH BRIEFING

SUMMERHALL PLANS: Developers AMA have submitted a pre-application notice outlining plans to demolish some buildings on the Summerhall site to make way for a mixed development, including “an arts centre, cultural, community and venue space”. The rest of the site would feature food and drink, small retail, hotel, student accommodation and flats. The pre-application notice can be seen here and a first public meeting is being held at Summerhall on Wednesday, between 3pm and 7.30pm, with an opportunity to ask AMA representatives about the plans.

FLIPPING TARTAN GIFT SHOP: Eighteen months after city businessman Bindi Singh Landa spent more than £1 million snapping up the Starbucks premises near the bottom of the Royal Mile, it is all change again. The independent coffee shop that opened there has been flipped to become yet another tartan themed gift shop. This one is called McTweeds. (You can read more about Bindi Landa Singh in our interview and profile from last year: The under-the-radar retail king of the Royal Mile)

GOLD GANG: Police are closing in on a crime gang which has targeted wealthy Asian families in the capital to steal gold, The Daily Record reports. The gang, reportedly based in Newcastle, use metal detectors to find jewellery including family heirlooms.

BOTANICS’ £65M PLAN: The Botanics is set to launch a new fund-raising campaign for the £65 milion next stage of its glass houses refurbishment. The Gardens’ Victorian Palm Houses have just reopened after a five-year, £23.5 million restoration. The next phase would see the neighbouring research glasshouses refurbished and a plant health hub created for quarantining species from overseas. The Gardens plans a public appeal as well as hoping for funding from the Scottish Government.

STEEL QUEENS: Women’s elite ice hockey has returned to Scotland for the first time in 32 years with the Caledonia Steel Queens making their Women’s National Ice Hockey League Elite debut. The club has grown from just seven players to 120 in nine years.

MICHELIN STAR ROW: Michelin-starred chef James Murray is appealing against a council decision that would mean removing a £35,000 timber decking from outside his pub on The Shore in Leith. Murray and his business partners at The Keelson were refused retrospective planning application for the outside seating area. He said: “We’ve created 22 jobs here on the Shore, in a community that we live in ourselves.”

BLACK PROFESSORS ‘RIDICULED’: Britain’s first black philosophy professor, Edinburgh University’s Professor Tommy Curry, has warned freedom of speech arguments are being used to suppress academic work on racism and colonialism. Prof Curry told The Scotsman that black professors are “ridiculed for incompetence”, with criticism of “woke” subjects and research in the UK increasingly reflecting the arguments of the US conservative right.

CO-OP FIGHTS ON: Edinburgh Bicycle Co-op boss Alan Nestor has told the Edinburgh News he will “not give up” after management bought some of the business’ stores from administration. Scotland’s longest established workers co-operate entered administration recently, and that has resulted in the closure of two stores in Aberdeen and Canonmills in the Capital, however branches in Bruntsfield and Newcastle, as well as Giant Stores in Edinburgh and Stirling, will remain open.

MORE MORNINGSIDE PAVEMENT: Work to widen the “dreadfully narrow” pavements on Morningside Road is set to begin at the end of the month. Bollards installed during the Covid pandemic opposite Waitrose will be replaced with a wider pavement. The work is due to be completed by March.

MOTORBIKE SHOWROOM TO FLATS: A former motorbike showroom which shut 14 years ago would be converted into eight serviced apartments under new plans for the Leith Links property. M&M Edinburgh Ltd has applied for planning permission for the conversion on Queen Charlotte Street.

LIGHTS OFF: Edinburgh Castle’s popular Castle of Light event has been cancelled after six years. Historic Environment Scotland said the light show within the castle had attracted more than 200,000 visitors over the six years, but a combination of high costs, the extensive planning work required and cancellations due to high winds and storms causing cancellations in previous years had made it unsustainable.

Pic of the week

THE BUSINESS

Finance sector plan to add billions to Scottish Economy

An eight-point briefing plan to ensure Scotland’s vital finance sector maximises the opportunities of the increasing adoption of digital assets and tokenisation in the sector has been prepared by the Scottish Digital Trust Centre of Excellence.

The plan maintains that adopting its recommendations could generate between an estimated £3 billion to £5 billion for the Scottish economy, by a sector that currently employs 151,000 people with more than a third of those based in the Capital.

The sector in Scotland manages around £500 billion in assets.

Based at Edinburgh Napier University, the Centre was founded about a year ago to help connect research, policy and real-world applications to ensure greater trust in increasingly digitally-reliant systems.

The report, aimed at senior stakeholders in government, industry bodies and private sector firms, highlights eight actions to ensure Scotland and its financial sector capitalises on the move towards digitised and tokenised financial assets – including a Scottish Government policy statement, a tokenisation readiness assessment and a digital assets taskforce.

Across the industry, investment assets and payments are increasingly moving onto digitised systems, based on blockchain and distributed ledger technology and says: “While today less than one dollar in every $10,000 of the world’s investments is held in tokenised form, experts believe it could rise to one in every $6 by 2035.”

The report, Scotland’s Roadmap for Digital Assets and Tokenisation, was prepared by Digital Trust Centre CEO Peter Ferry and ENU visiting academic James Ball, with contributions from Sarah Forbes, Emerging Opportunities Lead for Financial Services at Scottish Enterprise, and Head of Policy at Zumo, Daniel Taylor. It was also reviewed by senior figures at banking and digital asset firms.

AWARD-WINNERS: Congratulations to two Heriot-Watt University ventures – TissueMetrics and Recovery PX - which secured four awards between them at Converge 2026 Awards, Scotland’s leading programme for university entrepreneurs and innovators.

AI DATA WARNING: City businesses are being urged to keep a careful eye on AI tools being used by their teams, as unapproved use can see company data leaving the business without their knowledge. Managed Service Providers Mother Technologies maintain “shadow AI” – including free tools staff members may use themselves – can store data and use it to train their own systems. Providing approved tools and clear rules for their use are recommended.

DENTAL FIRM COLLAPSE: Sad news for Edinburgh’s burgeoning life sciences sector. A pioneering dental diagnostics firm with world-leading technology highlighted by the Inquirer early in its development has plunged into administration. Calcivis Limited appointed AAB Business & Tax Advisory administrators, and they said the firm had been “unable to bridge to profitability sufficiently quickly and continued to experience cash flow problems.”

THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT

PALM HOUSES & PRIME: There is no escaping the fact that two of the biggest events of the week celebrate two of the city’s greatest institutions. It is the first full week of the reopened Botanics’ Palm Houses (you need to book in advance) and of Gail Rankin bringing Jean Brodie to life in the National Theatre’s new production at the Lyceum (book tickets while you can).

ABOUT THE BIRDS: From mallards on the Water of Leith to the spiderhunting birds of Thailand, screen-printer Iona DeSouza and illustrator Sarah Martin celebrate our winged friends at Leith Makers on Leith Walk. Birds Exhibition: Print and Illustration runs on selected days until Sunday. Entry is free, but booking is required.

LANTERN LIGHT: Thousands of illuminated pumpkins, pumpkin carving demonstrations and tasty treats are on offer when Pumpkins after Dark opens on Friday at the Royal Highland Centre. Expect plenty of photo opportunities at the fair which runs until Halloween.

QUICK BITES

DEEP MEMORIES: The Deep Sea on Antigua Place near the top of Leith Walk has closed. The takeaway, etched in the memory of generations of Edinburgh residents who enjoyed a late-night snack at the popular chippy, is to be replaced by Toni’s Pizzeria, which aims to open later this year.

POPPING-UP FOR GOOD: Vietnamese street food festival pop-up Pho & Roll are to make their Jeffrey Street premises opened during the Fringe a permanent feature. It is due to close for a refurbishment at the weekend before reopening in mid-November as their second Edinburgh restaurant, to join their Stockbridge branch.

‘It’s a slightly odd situation for me; I’ve been involved in the festival for many years as a programmer running the Storytelling Centre and then as associate director,’ says Daniel Abercrombie when we sat down for a chat in the Centre cafe. ‘So in a way I understand the festival and know what works, but it’s really exciting for me to have it as my first as director with the buck stopping with me.’

This month brings an institutional changing of the guard to Edinburgh’s Royal Mile, and it’s not up at the castle. When the Scottish International Storytelling Festival opens its 2026 edition - running from 21 to 31 October - it does so without Dr Donald Smith in charge for the first time in 36 years, writes Will Quinn.

Founded in 1989, the event has expanded from an initial gathering of 700 attendees into the world’s largest celebration of the oral tradition, welcoming more than 40,000 visitors annually.

Abercrombie’s appointment, announced on World Storytelling Day by Traditional Arts and Culture Scotland (TRACS), represents a desired but not inevitable succession. Yet stepping into the shoes of the festival’s architect is an exacting task, especially with the simultaneous departure of longtime projects and programme manager Annalisa Salisu.

‘We lost two core members of staff in Donald, as the previous director, and Annalisa, who was our projects and programme manager,’ says Abercrombie. ‘So that has meant I’ve had to take on quite a bit of the planning myself, which is good because it’s given me a full overview of what’s happening in the festival.’

Daniel’s personal history with the Scottish Storytelling Centre mirrors the economic scarcity confronted by his predecessor decades earlier. After completing a master’s degree in cultural tourism focused on literature and visitor economies in Edinburgh, he found himself facing a frozen jobs market.

‘I’d completed my studies, all went well, and then couldn’t get a job,’ says Abercrombie. ‘It’s an age-old story. Couldn’t get a job, but I kept in touch with Donald, and he brought me along to help out with some volunteering, whilst he was helping to organise an Old Town festival around 2010.’

A programming role opened that autumn, and Abercrombie took it with both hands. Over the next sixteen years, he oversaw venue scheduling, ran its Edinburgh Festival Fringe output, and was part of the founding team of Edinburgh Tradfest in 2013. In other words, once upon a time, Daniel Abercrombie was a young man seeking his fortunes, who found a wise mentor, one he would ultimately succeed.

Frugal roots and community alliances

However, 21st-century life in the performing arts is anything but a fairytale. Working with progressively more constrained public funding requires an accommodation with tight resources. Fortunately, some might say, traditional storytelling carries a minimal technical footprint compared to mainstream theatre.

‘Our approach has always been limited on budget,’ notes Abercrombie. ‘Which is not always an issue because storytelling can operate on a small scale where almost all you need is to pay the storyteller.’

Yet long years of running a venue can lead to creative ossification. Practices and formats that worked a decade ago often persist simply because no one intervened to stop them. That’s true of all workplaces, and a centre for the performing arts is no exception.

The venue shutdown of March 2020, however, eliminated any risk of developing an institutional conveyor belt.

‘There was a major reset with COVID,’ Abercrombie explains. ‘That gave us - me in particular - a chance to reflect, but also a chance to stop doing things not because they weren’t working, but because we were forced to, which meant that we could really start with a clean page when we reopened.’

That forced hiatus reshaped his philosophy, gradually replacing top-down curation with authentic community partnerships. A notable post-lockdown example was Queer Folks’ Tales, developed alongside producer and storyteller Turan Ali.

‘Turan approached us; that was not our idea, but something I had been exploring was around personal stories,’ Abercrombie says. ‘Turan had this great idea. We helped pull that together, got a bit of funding for it, and assisted with some of the programming. It’s gone from strength to strength. Now five years down the line, it’s a really great thing, but if we’d started a queer storytelling night ourselves, I don’t know if it would have had the same traction as coming directly from that community in partnership.’

More recently, he applied a similar community model to Moonspinners, a performance series anchored to the natural calendar.

‘It’s based on the Celtic Wheel of the Year and held under full moons,’ says Abercrombie. ‘They have a community meal before the event, the performance downstairs, and then come back into the court space for a social event with more performance. To me, that’s a perfect festival celebration.’

Having been so integral to the success of the Scottish Storytelling Centre, relinquishing the building’s day-to-day operations to his colleague Lauren Paterson, now interim Head of Programming, is proving something of an exercise in personal discipline.

‘Part of my difficulty is going to be not getting too involved in the centre,’ Abercrombie admits. ‘Allowing the centre space to breathe means I also have to manage my capacity and focus on October as well as year-round talent development where I can. I’ve already stepped back, and Lauren - who is fabulous - is doing what she’s going to do.’

What Abercrombie is going to do is take the opportunity to sketch out a longer-term strategy for the festival he now leads. With two-year funding secured through the Scottish Government’s Expanded Festivals Fund, he has breathing space to look beyond immediate administrative survival.

‘Which means I’m not spending my autumn panicking about what we’re going to do,’ he says. ‘So I am currently thinking about the future.’

Epic cycles and global bridges

It becomes clear as our chat progresses that the shift from assistant director to leader is fundamentally altering Abercrombie’s perspective. Not only are his strategic muscles being flexed more by the day, but now he must think of himself as a cultural diplomat.

‘The main benefit for me has been being able to think outside the four walls of the Storytelling Centre and consider what’s happening around the rest of the country,’ he says. ‘And now it’s more about me getting a real understanding of what’s going on out there.’

That wider remit includes joining the directors of Festivals Edinburgh, ensuring the oral tradition has a seat at the table alongside the city’s heavyweight arts institutions.

‘I think when you change your role and have director in your title, all of a sudden people look at you differently,’ Daniel says. ‘They expect different things from you, which at this point in my career I was ready for, involving myself more in those conversations. I’m heavily involved with Festivals Edinburgh, of which our festival is one of “The Eleven”. With that comes a lot of advocacy for the festival and cultural scene in Edinburgh.’

It also freed him to travel to Stockholm in June for the Federation of European Storytellers (FEST) conference, trading August Fringe preparation for international bridge-building.

‘Meeting people in person was a great opportunity,’ he says. ‘At that time of year I would previously have been stuck in Fringe programming or busy summer venue planning, so it’s been a really nice shift in perspective - not necessarily in pace, as it’s been busier than ever, but in perspective.’

Indeed, if you think Abercrombie’s new role is just a seasonal Edinburgh affair, think again. While the capital provides the media hub, the festival itself is fundamentally decentralised - a national undertaking spanning eleven days in Edinburgh and more than a hundred events rolling out across Scotland over two full months.

‘It is a Scottish International Storytelling Festival, so a big part of the message is that it’s around the country,’ Daniel explains. ‘It is a large festival: eleven days here in Edinburgh, but also across two months through the country, with over a hundred events across the whole of Scotland. I don’t think there are other [storytelling] festivals on that scale.’

With a few more levers now within reach from the director’s hot seat, he remains committed to the festival’s mission to foster long-term sector health, supporting regional networks such as the Grampian Association of Storytellers (GAS) and Dundee’s Blether Tay-gether.

‘They are actively doing storytelling year-round in their communities,’ says Abercrombie. ‘As part of the festival, we offer financial and promotional support to help them host their events and sometimes send guest storytellers their way. Part of what we want to do is keep this tradition alive in the communities where it’s happening and where the stories originate.’

This pursuit of a firmer national footprint is balanced by an ambitious approach to international programming in October. For Abercrombie, overseeing the festival’s foreign slate, previously outside his remit, marked a fresh curatorial frontier.

‘Having direct influence on the international elements is new for me,’ says Abercrombie. ‘I had always been involved in making that happen, but actually making the decisions on the storytellers, countries, and cultural partnerships we’re going to have this year is a fresh step.’

This year’s curated slate prioritises sustained bilateral relationships over one-off showcases, forging fresh connections alongside long-standing European partners.

‘Three Turkish storytellers will be coming over, and I’m hopeful this might be part of a two-year partnership and cultural exchange where Scottish storytellers can go over there,’ he says. ‘We also have two groups from Italy alongside Canadian, Irish, and English performers. It’s been really exciting to see what the Turkish and Italian storytellers bring.’

The 2026 programme also issues a rare, and welcome, challenge to audience endurance. Rather than condensing tales into sixty-minute slots, Abercrombie is reviving long-form, serialised mythology with the Scots-Irish Ossian cycle and a two-part St Columba cycle.

‘There’s been a desire for a while to try these epic stories,’ says Abercrombie. ‘For example, with the Ossian cycle, we’ve brought Scots and Irish storytellers together across three performances to share this cycle in its natural flow, placing it in Scotland while linking it to Ireland. We split it into three so people can buy a ticket for one part, two parts, or experience the whole thing.’

It is a direct nod to how ancestral audiences consumed story over consecutive evenings.

‘If you go back to older times, people across many different cultures would hear the storyteller tell these stories night after night,’ Abercrombie notes. ‘It was entertainment, a moral message, and a way of connecting with your community.’

Yet Abercrombie refuses to view these epic commissions as museum pieces confined to a single Edinburgh basement.

‘The theatre here has 99 seats, so if 99 people come and enjoy that, that’s great,’ he says. ‘But it’s also about raising awareness - someone might read about it and realise Scotland has these mythological cycles that could be explored. I’d be really keen to see if other traditional arts festivals are interested in hosting these performance cycles as well.’

His broader ambition is to see newly commissioned oral work travel onto Scotland’s premier arts stages, ensuring these performance cycles find a life long after October ends. The Scottish International Storytelling Festival might open and close every October, but the work of its director is never done.

Joint imagination in a screen age

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For today’s long read we report on the abrupt closure of St Margaret’s House at Meadowbank as the home of 200 of the city’s artists and artisans.

If you don’t rcognise the name, you’ll know the building by the huge white sign on its wall declaring ART.

The building has long been earmarked for development as part of the transformation of that part of the city. Housing and more student accommodation is in the pipeline.

However, with negotiations for the sale of the propety close to conclusion, the tenants have been thrown into a race against time with just weeks to find new premises ahead of the festive break.

More on that below, but first your regular midweek news roundup and your cultural highlights for the week ahead.

Your Edinburgh Briefing

HEXAGON HOTEL: The landmark former Scottish Widows HQ on Dalkeith Road will be turned into a 385-bedroom hotel after councillors approved plans for its conversion. Seven of its 12 distinctive hexagons modules will be turned into either one or two hotels, while the remaining five will be demolished for housing development. Historic Environment Scotland was among supporters of developer Vita’s plans for the A-listed building, designed by Brutalist master Sir Basil Spence, despite objections about internal alterations, transport links and parking.

VAN TILLO TRIBUTES: Tributes have been paid to Ally Van Tillo, founder of the UK Aids Memorial Quilt, following his death at the age of 67. Ally (formerly known as Alastair Hume) grew up in Edinburgh, attending George Heriot’s School, before a career which encompassed running the Key West gay bar in Jamaica Street in the 1980s and activism for gay rights and HIV/Aids awareness. As well as founding the UK branch of the memorial quilt movement from Leith, he helped establish Milestone Venture Trust, the forerunner to the city charity Waverley Care. The charity has paid tribute to his “humility and generosity” and his legacy of compassion and understanding. The Guardian’s obituary can be found here.

GOING FORTH: A row of New Town townhouses will be turned into a 53-bedroom apartment-hotel after councillors approved plans for the conversion on Forth Street.

MUSSELS BLUES: Falling salt levels in seawater – caused by climate change bringing warmer, wetter winters - could be contributing to driving blue mussels from parts of the Firth of Forth according to scientists at Heriot-Watt University. While other factors are in play – including pollution – the researchers who have been studying mussels in the Forth for 20 years have found that baby mussels are especially sensitive to fresher water, with their growth and development badly affected when the seawater becomes diluted. The areas of greatest loss include Cramond and Musselburgh.

RISING PROPERTY PRICES: Edinburgh has recorded the highest rises in prices and rents of any of the UK’s Big Six regional cities, which includes Birmingham, Bristol, Glasgow, Leeds and Manchester, according to global property consultants JLL. Average prices of new-build flats in the city rose by 6.1% over the past year, while rents increased by 3.6%, with limited supply and high demand identified as major factors.

POLITICAL STRIFE: The city’s Lib Dems are not the only ones who can do internal battles in the capital, Labour are at it too. Serial rebel Katrina Faccenda, the councillor for Leith, is appealing a party decision to block her from standing at next May’s local elections. Fairmilehead and Colinton councillor Conor Savage is also facing deselection.

SEASIDE BOOK FEST: Best-selling crime writer Doug Johnstone is one of the stars of this year’s Portobello Book Festival which runs from Friday until Sunday.

COUNT US OUT: Fife and the Borders don’t want to become part of the same regional authority as Edinburgh, the Scottish Parliament has been told. Murdo Fraser, MSP for Mid-Scotland and Fife, told a parliamentary debate about the Scottish Government’s plans to establish new regional councils that the two areas were concerned about their interests being overlooked by an authority centred on the city.

Your Pick of the (Cultural) Pops

Greetings, Pop Pickers!

The autumn wind is picking up, but Edinburgh’s stages are in blistering form. Before that, let’s pause to appreciate La Clique’s announced return to town. After their beloved 106-year-old Famous Spiegeltent home was unceremoniously locked out of this year’s Fringe, they’ve simply borrowed another vintage canvas - the Palais du Variété - and will pitch up in Bristo Square for Christmas. Pure impudence! It seems you can’t keep a great troupe down. Yes, indeed!

Over in Tollcross, the King’s Theatre is officially open for business, with Jasmin Vardimon’s Lullaby having properly baptised the newly flattened stage with world-class dance. Out on the streets, Edinburgh University lecturers are on strike over the threat of compulsory redundancies, though with construction hammers ringing across the capital’s latest luxury student blocks, developers don’t seem to have noticed. What’s that? Get on with the entertainment picks? Well, OK!

Right then, pop pickers - let’s count them down!

Honourable Mentions: Wallace, Future Acts, Eurydice & The Void

Bubbling just under the chart, there is terrific stuff across town. Over at The Studio, catch Rob Drummond and Dave Hook’s furiously funny hip-hop musical Wallace (until Saturday), which gleefully skewers the Braveheart mythos to ask who Scotland’s legendary rebel really was. Down on Lothian Road, the Filmhouse hosts Future Acts (Saturday), a screening of six short films uniting stage and screen from the NTS and BBC Scotland. As I’ve noted over at The Quinntessential Review, it is a thrilling, ambitious project which will hopefully capture the raw immediacy of live performance on a cinematic scale. Meanwhile, the Assembly Roxy welcomes Eurydice (until Saturday) from a buzzy “new(ish)” local outfit, offering a fresh, heroine-centred spin on the classic underworld myth of Orpheus. Finally, Traverse Fringe smash The Void (October 6th – 7th) makes a welcome return - I missed it in August, but I’ll be in the stalls this time. Don’t miss ‘em!

Staying at Number 5 is... A Play, a Pie and a Pint: The Whaler’s Wife (Traverse Theatre, until Saturday)

Holding firm in the fifth spot from last week is Scotland’s undisputed hothouse of new writing, continuing its autumn diet at the Traverse. If you can catch even one lunchtime offering this season, make time. Beth Morton directs Izzy Gray’s The Whaler’s Wife - a tale of 1820s Orkney packed with sea shanties, ribald humour, and three rebellious women keeping things afloat while the men are off hunting the Arctic ice. A cracking forty-five minutes of theatre, a pie, and a pint. Total lunchtime perfection!

New in at Number 4 is... RSNO: West Side Story (Usher Hall, October 9th)

Swooping into fourth place is an absolute feast of American orchestral firepower. For the uninitiated, the RSNO - the Royal Scottish National Orchestra - is one of Europe’s premier symphonic heavyweights, with a Grammy-nominated, Gramophone Award-winning reputation and a fearsome brass and string section that could lift the roof off the Usher Hall. Rising piano sensation Jeneba Kanneh-Mason takes the keys and conductor Thomas Søndergård leads a dazzling stateside trip: Copland’s open-air Appalachian Spring, Florence Price’s sumptuous Piano Concerto, and William Grant Still’s soulful warmth, all building to Bernstein’s electrifying Symphonic Dances from West Side Story. When this world-class ensemble cuts loose on those iconic Broadway rhythms, expect pure magic.

New in at Number 3 is... The Steamie (King’s Theatre, October 5th – 10th)

Grabbing the bronze medal is an undisputed Scottish classic. Tony Roper’s 1987 play became an instant legend on television in 1988 - the Quinn family VHS was practically played to transparent ribbons. Set in a 1950s Glasgow washhouse on Hogmanay, it follows four working-class women scrubbing clothes, trading gossip, and dreaming of the future as they race to finish their laundry before the bells. Fresh from triumphs in Stirling and Aberdeen, this joyful celebration of community spirit lands in Tollcross. A quick tip: the newly restored Gods in the King’s are vastly improved, but legroom remains a pinch for the long-limbed. Don’t dawdle on tickets!

Rising to Number 2 is... Legally Blonde The Musical (Edinburgh Playhouse, until Saturday)

Up to number two this week! There is barely a hotter ticket in the city judging by the handful of seats left on the board. You practically need a second mortgage to take the family along, but Amber Davies is riding a monster wave of acclaim for her Elle Woods. Just like its originating movie, the musical follows the bubbly sorority president as she trades her pink-scented stationery for Harvard Law School to win back her pompous ex, only to discover her own formidable legal brilliance along the way. Think big tunes, blistering routines, and pure pop energy.

Straying at Number 1 is... The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Royal Lyceum Theatre, tomorrow until October 18th)

Keeping the top spot of the pops this week, this remains hands-down the theatrical event of the Scottish autumn! Muriel Spark’s classic arrives via a powerhouse triple alliance: the National Theatre of Scotland, The Lyceum, and Pitlochry Festival Theatre. David Harrower adapts, Vicky Featherstone directs, and the astonishing Gayle Rankin stars as the magnetic, dangerous schoolmistress moulding her “crème de la crème”. Fresh from The Incomer opposite Domhnall Gleeson, Rankin taking on Brodie a stone’s throw from Spark’s own school days is absolute theatrical dynamite. Did I say most of this last week? Yes I did. Nothing has changed — Brilliant stuff? Yes, indeed! Not ‘arf!

And that’s your Top 5!

So whether you fancy trading washhouse gossip in the newly minted King’s Gods, soaking up American orchestral brass under the Usher Hall dome, or watching Miss Brodie mould her impressionable crème de la crème on Grindlay Street, your diary ought to be groaning.

Until next week: Stay bright!

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Artists refused six months grace as developers move in

200 creative enterprises face race against time to find new homes in under-pressure city property market

by David Forsyth

Around 200 artists, creatives and community groups have been given just three months to find new homes after being told to leave their base in Meadowbank to make way for development.

St Margaret’s House on London Road has been used as a creative hub since 2008 but with owners Caledonian Trust in talks to sell the property the tenants have been given notice to quit.

The Inquirer understands that tenants who had agreed a six-months notice period with social enterprise Scot-ART, which has been operating the former office block as a creative hub, have been told they need to be out by the end of the year.

That leaves them scrambling to find alternative accommodation at a time when there is an acute shortage of space for creative businesses in the city.

The many tenants include the Lavender Menace Queer Books Archive which survived a recent threat to its future thanks to supporters including literary stars Val McDermid and Jackie Kay.

“Plenty of time”

Caledonian Trust, which says it has let the property under “generous” terms to the creative community, insists the tenants are being given “plenty of time for people to plan ahead.”

A Trust spokesperson told The Herald: “We have fully communicated that St Margaret’s House has been on the market for some time.

“We’re in discussions with a preferred party, but the process isn’t finished and it would be inappropriate to provide any more detail.”

And added: “St Margaret’s House has been an important home for independent artists and freelancers in Edinburgh and we have been proud to support them.

“However, the building is decades old and no longer meets the standards needed for its long-term future.”

Space at a premium

Finding affordable space will be challenging. Some venues, notably The Bunker in Leith, have a few spaces available, but there are limited options for such a large number of enterprises. Bigger providers of creative spaces, such as Edinburgh Wasps and Out of the Blue, which both operate in a number of buildings around the city, have very limited availability. Little has changed since The Inquirer reported on a waiting lists of 1,000 artists at Out of the Blue.

Chris Murray, the MP for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh, is due to meet today with both Caledonian Trust and Scot-ART to discuss the potential sale and the arrangements being proposed. He told us: “St Margaret’s House is a treasured part of the community and a base for organisations and creatives that make a massive contribution to Scotland. This news is hugely disappointing, its closure will be felt by communities across Edinburgh and beyond.

“I am contacting those based there and those involved to see what can be done, and will be meeting with both Scot-ART and the landlord. Every effort now must be made to ensure all those impacted are supported with finding new premises and any impact on them is felt as minimally as possible.

“Edinburgh is at risk of losing a hub central to many people. Simply put, more now needs to be done to support community spaces like St Margaret’s House, spaces that are so vital to so many across Edinburgh.”

Not up to standard

Planning permission was received as far back as 2020, renewed in 2023, for redevelopment of the site involving the demolition of the existing building and its replacement with three new blocks – one housing student accommodation and two apartment blocks.

A Caledonian Trust spokesperson added: “The building is decades old and no longer meets the standards needed for its long-term future.”

Scot-ART has held a lease for several years and sub-lets to tenants as well as managing the building. Caledonian Trust’s most recent accounts show a rental income of £186,750 or around £2 per square foot excluding VAT.

One of the tenants Calum MacDonald of animation studio Gibbet FX confirmed the news on social media, saying: “Everyone is getting kicked out of the Edinburgh Scot-ART/St Margaret’s House building.

“All so developers can convert the building into another student block of flats/hotel. Apparently Edinburgh doesn’t really want long term residents and artists.”

Thank you for the time

Bob Orr, director of the Lavender Menace Queer Books Archive, said the arts hub had played a crucial role in allowing the collection to survive and thrive.

He told The Inquirer: “Finding the space in St Margaret’s House some years ago, gave the Lavender Menace Queer Books Archive the opportunity to establish itself and provide a safe, public space for the LGBTQ+ community. It also gave us the chance to expand our collection of rare and out of print queer titles from the 1970s and 2000s and beyond. For that opportunity everyone in the Archive will always be grateful.”

Scot-ART reconfigured the space at Meadowbank House to accommodate space to more than 200 artists, artisans, entrepreneurs and galleries. It also offers community arts spaces, a theatre, rehearsal space, a martial arts dojo, and meeting rooms amongst other things. The Scot-ART website says it remains 100% occupied with a waiting list for any space that becomes available. Scot-ART also operates from Summerhall and Lochside View.

No one at Scot-ART was available for comment.

Over the last ten years, Edinburgh’s proposed “Garden District” has periodically caused a stir - from neighbouring suburbs and villages right up to the Scottish Government. The proposed construction of thousands of homes to the west of the City Bypass faced opposition for its Green Belt location and concerns about the strain the thousands of incoming households would put on the surrounding roads and infrastructure.

The first phase was eventually approved by both city council and Scottish Government, due in large part to the benefit to the city of the jobs and much-needed housing it would bring.

The full plans approved in principle in 2016 promised 6000 homes constructed over twenty years, with a first phase of 1350 homes at “Redheughs Village”. And yet, 10 years on, not a single brick of the Garden District has been laid.

The past decade has brought more than its fair share of economic turmoil, from Brexit and the pandemic to war in Ukraine and trans-Atlantic trade wars. But even against that remarkable background, the glacially slow progress on the city’s most significant housing development – at a time when Edinburgh has declared a housing emergency – has been staggering.

What has gone wrong? Why has progress been so mind-blowingly slow? The reasons are many and complex, but they raise important questions about our approach to the provision of new homes.

A timeline of delays: The Garden District

1989: Sir David Murray purchases over 600 hectares of land to the West of Edinburgh.

2010: Murray Estates Limited announce plans for a development “dedicated to gardening” including an international gardening showcase alongside 3500 homes, a 25,000 seat sports stadium, and potentially a national curling centre.

2016: Plans for the Garden District have now evolved to include 6000 homes and leisure, health and school facilities. Planning in principle is granted by the City of Edinburgh Council for the first phase of the Garden District, which will include 1350 homes and associated amenities. The plans are approved despite officers recommending they be refused due to their not being included in the existing Local Development Plan.

2016: The phase 1 plans are called in for consideration by the Scottish Government over concerns about infrastructure.

April 2022: Scottish Government grants permission to the first phase of the garden district under certain conditions, including the drafting of a masterplan for the site.

7 November 2024: A new local development plan (City Plan 2030) is approved by council, which includes Garden District Phase 1 (also known as Redheughs Village).

February 2025: Murray Estates announce sale of the Redheughs Village site to Places for People Developments, a social enterprise housing developer- for £18 million profit. Places for People drafts and submits a masterplan alongside other plans required as conditions of the planning consent.

November 2025: Edinburgh Council approves the masterplan for Redheughs Village.

May 2026: Groundworks begin at Redheughs Village.

2028: 50 homes are estimated to be completed at Redheughs Village.

2034: According to the Council housing land audit, the last of the 1350 homes in Redhueghs Village will be built.

Fewer homes and slower to appear

There are, finally, signs of progress being made – and homes actually being built – on the Garden District site. However, it may be far fewer than initially planned, and even the first few dozen homes are still two years away.

Earthworks in preparation for housebuilding began on the site in May of this year, and according to the council’s estimations, the full first phase won’t be finished until 2034.

Ten years after the council approved the Murray Estate’s development, the agreement in place is only for 1350 homes, rather than the initial goal of 6000 by 2034.

According to Murray Estates, a proposal for a further 5000 homes will be put forward for inclusion in the renewed local development plan (the City Plan 2040). This plan, which allocates land for housing to be built between 2029 and 2039, has not yet been drafted - the city council has not yet had the go ahead to draft it from Scottish Government ministers, however the current evidence suggests that Edinburgh needs nearly 40,000 new homes by 2039 - and that two thirds of these should be affordable or social housing.

When asked about the timeline, Murray Estates maintains that it has the capacity to deliver another five thousand homes over the two decades - starting from when planning permission is granted and “subject to planning approvals and commercial viability”.

Professor Kenneth Gibb, director of the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence, points to a few of the commercial constraints that private housing developers operate under.

“They tie up their capital and land until the properties are built. As limited companies, developers have committed to a certain return on investment for their shareholders - maintaining that profit level can require waiting out years-long lulls in the housing market, or slowly phased construction to maintain housing price levels in the specific area of construction.

“These market dynamics are mismatched to the goal of Edinburgh council to provide an urgently-needed, rapid supply of affordable housing. There are some fundamental big picture questions here about the nature of private sector housing development, which can be known to follow this kind of business logic,” he says.

On the other hand, Gibb points out that the obligation on private developers to include a certain percentage of affordable housing, within a phased development, can work well. Developers may wish to build out the social housing during the early phases, providing a guaranteed return at the beginning of the overall development. The affordable housing obligation on private developers in Edinburgh is now 35% as of 2024 - the highest in Scotland.

We asked David M Murray, who runs the family business Murray Capital alongside his brother Keith, how he balances the acuteness of a housing crisis with his self-description as a “patient developer.”

“It is exactly that - a delicate balance of ambition and patience,” he says. “The allocation of sites for new homes is addressed through the Local Development Plan. The preparation of the Local Development Plan is a lengthy process but we will pursue projects on the land we own when the time is right to do so.

“I’ve said before that I believe the sites being opened up on the western fringes of the city - including within the Garden District - will be key to tackling the housing crisis in Edinburgh. We want to play our part by bringing forward good projects, in collaboration with the council and by working with the right housebuilding partners, whoever they may be.”

Is the Garden District the answer to Edinburgh’s housing crisis?

Read more

Edinburgh West MP Christine Jardine has announced she will stand down at the next election after an attempt to deselect her from within her local party.

The Liberal Democrat MP has represented Edinburgh West for nine years and secured one of the biggest majorities in Scotland, of 16,470, at the General Election in 2024.

The 65-year-old former journalist has been praised for her work on issues including supporting survivors of domestic abuse, childhood bereavement and Ukrainian refugees.

However, she has failed to win a reselection vote staged by her constituency party executive, and as a result has announced her intention to stand down at the next election.

Allies claim she is the victim of internal party politics and being pushed out in favour of an ally of fellow city Lib Dem and Scottish party leader Alex Cole-Hamilton.

It’s not a happy Lib Dem family, then? Jardine and Cole-Hamilton are close geographically and politically, having represented the west of the capital together - her as MP and he as MSP - since 2017. However, tensions have been reported in their relationship, since at least 2019, when Cole-Hamilton was said to be trying to curb her leadership ambitions. Allegations about her behaviour were made at that time by a former party staffer but were not taken forward by the party.

Did she have a choice? Yes, at least to some degree. Jardine had the right to take the issue to a vote of the full local party membership. She has said she will not do that, to avoid further “tension and division”.

Jardine pointedly acknowledges “the decision by some of the local party” (our italics) and described the situation as “hurtful”, adding she wasn’t forcing a wider vote on her future as didn’t “wish to expose anyone to more tension and division”.

‘Too old’: She told The Herald she had been told she was too old to stand again despite being close in age to First Minister John Swinney and former PM Keir Starmer, and six years younger than Scottish Lib Dem MP Jamie Stone. She said: “There were opinions that emerged about my age and I found it quite sexist.”

Sacked and backed: Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey is understood to have been supportive of Jardine in recent weeks, despite sacking her as the party’s equalities spokesperson for defying the party whip. She voted against a Conservative amendment last year calling for a review of access to benefits for foreign nationals and those with mental health issues. He praised her warmly at the weekend, describing her as “a fantastic champion for Liberalism, Scotland and the people of Edinburgh” and praising her work on the Domestic Abuse Act.

Alex Cole-Hamilton has also publicly praised Jardine her saying “she has been excellent to work alongside” and saying her work “will have a long legacy”.

What happens next? Jardine has made clear she intends to serve as MSP until the next election “with the care I have always sought to bring over the last nine years”, while Davey said “I know there is a lot more to come (from Jardine) in this parliament.” With speculation about the possibility of a snap election, the local party will need to consider their choice for Jardine’s successor. That’s a decision in which she, as a senior local member, will play a part.

YOUR EDINBURGH BRIEFING

GAMES-MAKER FACES CLOSURE: A video game studio established by a former Grand Theft Auto developer is facing closure after its debut game flopped. Leith-based Build a Rocket Boy, which launched MindsEye last summer to a series of bad reviews and player complaints, has now gone into administration.

CIRCUS TIME: There was no Speigeltent in St Andrew Square this summer, but there will be one in Bristo Square this winter. Circus stars La Clique will stage a seven-week residence as part of Edinburgh’s Winter Festival line-up, as it branches out into the Old Town.

SNP POLLS CHEER: The SNP can take some heart from the predictions for Edinburgh in the latest YouGov ‘super-poll’ for Sky News which questioned more than 16,000 people across the UK on their Westminster voting intentions. It’s modelling suggests the party is on course to retake the Edinburgh East and Musselburgh seat from Labour’s Chris Murray and puts them neck-in-neck with Labour’s Scott Arthur in Edinburgh South-West and Tracy Gilbert in Edinburgh North and Leith. Labour and the Lib Dems are comfortably ahead in Edinburgh South and Edinburgh West respectively. The findings are similar to those of a Survation super-poll earlier in the month, although that put the SNP ahead in Edinburgh South-West and Edinburgh North and Leith. Both polls are based on extrapolating national results on to local seats, rather than constituency by constituency polling.

UNI STRIKES: Around 3000 University of Edinburgh staff start five weeks of strike action today in protest at the continuing threat of compulsory redundancies as it tries to cut £140 million from its annual budget.

Course cuts controversy: That comes as the unions and student representatives accuse the university of “cultural vandalism” over plans to close more than 90 degree programmes, with Scottish and Celtic studies and joint honours language courses among the hardest hit. Critics say the university is promoting generalist degrees ahead of specialist ones, to the cost of Scottish students and their interests.

‘Still a leader’: Professor Alex Thomson, head of the School of Literatures Languages and Cultures, which has suffered around half of the cuts, has defended the move, pointing out the university remains “a leading provider of modern languages and of Celtic and Scottish studies in the UK - this will not change”. The university is consolidating courses with very low enrolments (around a fifth of those being axed have zero students this year) and will continue to offer the subjects as part of other degree programmes, he said.

CANNABIS FARMS: A tenement flat being used as a cannabis farm on South Clerk Street was among the properties raided in one of Police Scotland’s biggest operations against organised crime. About 300 officers took part in simultaneous early-morning raids across the country, leading to the arrest of 36 people and the discovery of 14 cannabis-growing operations. Police Scotland say they were targeting a Vietnamese crime group involved in “poly-criminality,” including human trafficking, drug production, fraud, money laundering and organised immigration crime.

FAIRTRADE CAPITAL: Edinburgh has been reaffirmed as a Fairtrade City by the Fairtrade Foundation – a recognition the Capital first achieved in 2004 – for the city’s ongoing dedication to promoting Fairtrade and increasing the use of licensed products carrying the Fairtrade Mark and the role our businesses, communities, and residents play in creating a more equitable global trade system.

MOTORBIKER KILLED: A motorcyclist has died after crashing on Seafield Road seconds after failing to stop for police. The 40-year-old shortly was killed after colliding with another vehicle just after 6.30pm last Wednesday.

DRONES CATCH: Heriot-Watt researchers are to run an underwater drone trial on Orkney which will test the technology in finding and recovering lost fishing gear in the waters around the islands. The University and Orkney Fisheries Association have secured European Horizon funding for the initiative, which will tackle both the financial cost and environmental impact of lost fishing gear.

FIRE-RAISING GANG: Police are linking a fire-raising attack in East Lothian to another carried out in Edinburgh on the same day. Pictures of three men have been released in the hunt for those responsible for the attacks on 21 December last year on Buxley Road, near Tranent.

Pic of the week

THE BUSINESS

Smartphone security being improved in Edinburgh

An Edinburgh-based mobile cybersecurity firm and one of the capital’s leading universities are teaming up to make our smartphones more secure.

Edinburgh Napier University and Approov Ltd have agreed a Knowledge Transfer Partnership. Over the course of 30 months, they will work together to create innovative defence mechanisms and a test bed.

It builds on Edinburgh Napier’s strong record in cyber security and digital trust technology, which has seen the university recognised by the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre and Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) as an Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Education, as well as spinning our several successful cybersecurity companies

Jae Hossell, Approov Chief Technology Officer, said: “We are thrilled to partner with Edinburgh Napier University for this Knowledge Transfer Partnership.

“By combining our industry expertise with their world-class cybersecurity researchers, we are creating a unique environment to stress-test our software.This ensures Approov continues to deliver the highest standard of mobile security to our customers worldwide.”

SUNSHINE FUNDING: Edinburgh-based SolarSub Ltd, which specialises in developing passive cooling solutions for photovoltaic modules, has completed a £1.34 million funding round to accelerate the development and commercialisation of its technology.

FOOD AWARD HEAVEN: Five food and drink businesses from Edinburgh have won six awards – including the most prestigious accolade Product of the Year - at the Scotland Food & Drink Excellence Awards 2026: Edgefield Craft Butchers, Dry Aged Prime Rib from Native Scotch Cattle (Scotch Brand Product of the Year, and Product of the Year); Woven Whisky Makers, Woven WXC Coffee Infused Whisky (Distilling Product of the Year (Dark Spirits); east PIZZAS, Topped Spicy Pizza (Grocery Product of the Year); Bon Accord Soft Drinks, Rhubarb Soda (Healthy or Free From Product of the Year); and Howies Restaurants (Best for Scottish (Independent Business of the Year).

THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT

MIDDLE AGED KICKS: The magnificent Undertones are celebrating their 50th anniversary with a tour that comes to Edinburgh Corn Exchange on Saturday. There’s no Fergal Sharkey, but the rest of the line-up is classic, and the support comes from Fife’s finest, The Skids.

LEGACY LAST CHANCE: The extraordinary depth and quality of the City Arts Centre’s collection is brilliantly laid out in the Jean F Watson: An artistic legacy exhibition. This weekend is your last chance to see the collection which features many rarely seen works inspired by the capital.

PALM HOUSES: The Botanics Palm Houses reopen for public tours from Friday. You need to book in advance to see the results of the beautiful restoration of one of the city’s great treasures.

QUICK BITES

COCKTAILS FOR TWO: Edinburgh Cocktail Week, 10 days of cocktails, special offers and special events starts on Friday. If you need reminded just how good Edinburgh is at cocktails, then Cat Thomson’s long read Anyone for a Shirley Temple or Roy Rogers? is a neat reminder.

TAPA CLOSURE: Popular tapas restaurant Tapa is to close on Saturday. Based at Shore Place in Leith, the owners have said that the decision has been prompted by a combination of health issues and difficult trading conditions.

IN A WHIRL: A new addition to Edinburgh’s hospitality scene, Whirlybird, has gained prestigious support after being added to the influential Michelin guide. The Victoria Street venue was opened in May this year as a modern all-day tavern.

It was a violent death thousands of miles from home, as the evening cooled from the day’s 100 degrees. There was nothing to see but scorched sand, and one scrubby acacia tree throwing miserable but welcome shade.

When Major Alexander Gordon Laing understood his fate was to be murdered in that remote part of the enormous desert of the Sahara – far from his new bride Emma and even further from his comfortable home in Edinburgh’s burgeoning New Town - he must have felt desperate.

Laing’s courage and resilience are not in dispute. However, African exploration by the British and other European powers was largely driven by colonial expansion, designed to enrich these powerful countries by opening new trade routes, often with little or no regard to the welfare of the indigenous populations. Laing, as a professional soldier, had fought in colonial actions to secure land for the British Empire from its indigenous people including in the Ashanti Wars in Africa’s Gold Coast, as well as seeing action to suppress the slave trade.

One of Edinburgh’s often forgotten heroes of exploration, he was the first European to set foot in Timbuktu in then largely unexplored North Africa. A military officer, his death – thought to have happened 200 years ago today - was for many years shrouded in mystery, making headlines around the world and creating diplomatic tensions. His papers charting his journey, stolen in the murderous attack, were never found.

His story is the stuff of Boy’s Own adventure combined with an Agatha Christie murder mystery concerning a man of great courage and determination. He would come to be recognised as the first European to set eyes on Timbuktu after many failed British and other expeditions, two of which had been led by the famed and controversial Scot, Mungo Park, whose treatment of native people had fuelled deep enmity and distrust of Christians.

Park had explored Africa’s interior decades before Laing, but his “shoot first” policy, particularly during his second voyage exploring the Niger River, had seen him slaughter local people and earned distrust and contempt for European explorers. At one point, despite the decades between them, Laing was mistaken for Park and in a letter home, described his displeasure at being mistaken for a man who “made war upon the people inhabiting the banks of the Niger” and went on to describe his unhappiness at Park’s attempt at “making exploration in this land, at the expense of the blood of its inhabitants.”

Hacked and wounded, but on he went

The irony is that just weeks before his death, Laing had thought the worst lay behind him, surviving a night-time attack by a band of Tuaregs that left him with 24 wounds, 18 of them severe, as they hacked at his fallen body with curved scimitars.

Extraordinarily he had insisted that he soldier on within a day or two. Covered in bandages, tied to his camel he finally reached the fabled city of Timbuktu – the first European to set eyes upon it. It was a lifetime goal, a glorious achievement that would see his name celebrated around the world. Even more, he would soon to be reunited with his beloved Emma.

His dearest Emma, the daughter of Hanmer Warrington, Britain’s Consul in Tripoli. They had spent so little time together, weeks only. He had married her just two days before setting off on his quest to find Timbuktu, seen at that time as the greatest prize of exploration on earth. Laing felt guilt at how little time they had spent together, and in one of his letters from his journey to her father he said: “If it pleases God to spare us for each other (and that it will so please Him I have implicit faith) I shall devote the remainder of my life to atone for the unhappiness I have occasioned her…”

All of his hopes and dreams, his very future was being snatched away as his killers stalked towards him in that dark evening, armed with blades and spears. There would be no happy ending.

A shallow grave under an acacia tree

Alexander Gordon Laing’s story is one of heroism and tragedy. The full truth of it may never be known, but in what appears to be the most likely version he was betrayed and murdered at the end, then buried in a shallow grave at the foot of a lonely acacia tree where he may earlier have sought shelter. He may have been beheaded, only bones were ever found. The detail of his story, and its place in the pantheon of exploration, can be discovered in Frank T Kryza’s book “The Race for Timbuktu.” The later discovery of his assumed remains, and most reliable information on his fate, are described by the man who found them, French military officer and explorer M. Bonnel de Mézières, whose account was later published in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society.

He spoke in Timbuktu to a man who claimed to descend from one of the killers, a fact he spoke proudly of, and showed the Frenchman a small ornamental bird which Emma is thought to have given Laing, and following his description of events found the place and recovered several bones buried in a shallow grave.

Laing was born in Edinburgh in 1794, educated at his father’s own academy and showed himself a brilliant student who enrolled at University at 12 years old, he was to emerged from early military service in the Caribbean and West Africa as one of Britain’s most ambitious explorers. By the mid‑1820s he had already traced sections of the Niger River and published Travels in the Timannee, Kooranko and Soolima Countries (1825), all of which established him as a credible candidate for the era’s most coveted geographical challenge: reaching the Timbuktu.

What was to be his last expedition began in 1825 under the UK’s Colonial Secretary, Henry Bathurst with instructions ringing in his ears to reach Timbuktu. His starting point would be Tripoli, where the consul was Hanmer Warrington. During his weeks of preparation there he fell in love with Emma Warrington, and they were wed on July 14.

Ambushed, suffering 24 wounds

Two days later, he left her as he set out with a caravan led by a local sheikh, who was later suspected of plotting against him. He expected to be away a few months at most. In the event it took him more than a year of overcoming challenges, illness, disease and injury to reach Timbuktu.

The worst of these obstacles was undoubtedly the Tuareg attack, which is likely to have been in the earliest days of February 1826. The caravan was joined by a heavily armed band of around 20 Tuareg. After a few days of rising tension, Laing was violently ambushed, the group surrounding his tent and firing into it, before hacking at him with their blades.

In a letter to his wife, written as he and his group continued their journey across a never ending plain of rocks and sand, Laing asked her to excuse his writing and the brevity of the note as “I write with only a finger and thumb, having a very severe cut on my forefinger.” His fingers were left hanging off by the sword slashes he had endured, but he did not mention the attack.

He did, however, detail them all in a letter to his father-in-law – who also kept them from Emma to protect her.

Timbuktu is reached

On 18 August, 2026, he arrived in Timbuktu. Despite concerns as to how a Christian might be treated in this very Muslim city, he was initially met with great courtesy, and was given a small house for his use (which still exists today). He spent weeks walking around the city, taking notes as he studied the city’s architecture and culture, and became known as “The Chief” to the population because of his dignified military bearing.

In arriving at Timbuktu, Laing was ahead of all competitors and was also in line to win a significant financial prize being offered by the Geographical Society of Paris to the first man to reach Timbuktu and return.

Despite the courteous welcome he had received, the overall political situation made him extremely vulnerable – as a foreigner and a Christian and wounded as he still was. He was warned that his life would be in danger if he stayed much longer and so decided to begin the final leg of his journey – back to Tripoli and Emma.

On or around 24 September he left the city and began the arduous journey home. It is thought he was killed on 26 September, murdered by his Arab escort who, it is believed, demanded he renounce his faith and, when he refused, killed him with spear and sword.

Laing’s journals and papers vanished with him. The story was eventually pieced together from a variety of sources, including eye-witnesses.

Sadly, the tragedy did not end with Laing’s death. His wife Emma remarried, this time to her father’s second-in-command Thomas Wood, in April 1829. He was posted to Italy, where he had hoped the climate would restore her shattered health and spirit. Instead, within six months, she would be dead of consumption.

A Franchman, Rene Caillie, made it to Timbuktu more than 600 days after Laing. He was to visit the house in which Laing had briefly lived, before himself returning to Paris to claim the 10,000 franc prize. The Gold Medal that went with it, however, was awarded to both men.

This article was amended on 27 September 2026 to include extra context about the impact of British colonialism and Laing’s role within it.

You might remember the UK Government announcing plans to build the next UK supercomputer in Edinburgh at a cost of £750 million. The investment was confirmed last summer, after the incoming Labour government initially dropped the plan saying it had been left unfunded by their Conservative predecessors.

Well, work is now underway in Midlothian to build what will be the most powerful supercomputer in the world when it is switched on in 2028.

Where do you build a facility that sounds more like it belongs in the pages of science fiction than in the real world? What will it look like? And what will it do?

We had so many questions that we sent Ilona Amos along to find out more.

You can read all about that below, but first your regular midweek news roundup and your cultural highlights for the week ahead.

Your Edinburgh Briefing

AIPORT PANNED: Edinburgh Airport has been named one of the worst in the UK for passengers in a report by the consumer champion Which? The capital’s airport was ranked 23rd out of 27 UK airports for the overall traveler experience - and worst in the UK for baggage waiting times. Which? surveyed more than 6,000 passengers to rate the airports on waiting times, food and drink, customer service, and more.

Waiting woes: The Which? findings broadly reflect the common themes on Google reviews of the airport. There passengers often praise the airside departure lounges and the security upgrade that has seen the removal of liquid limits, but regularly complain of baggage delays and long queues on the landside.

New chief and investment: The report will offer food for thought to new chief executive Mark Johnson who is joining from Gatwick Airport where he has been chief operating officer. The airport - the UK’s busiest outside of London and Manchester - has just announced a £500 million expansion over the next five years, including new gates, an expanded check-in hall and a 60% bigger terminal overall.

CONNERY FILM CENTRE: A major training centre for the next generation of filmmakers is to open in Edinburgh in memory of one of the city’s most famous sons, Sir Sean Connery. The late film star’s family have announced plans for the NFTS Sean Connery Institute, a collaboration between the Sean Connery Foundation and the National Film and Television School. A search is underway for a permanent, city centre home for the institute with a view to opening within 18 months.

CUTTING EDGE: The show must go on. Back in April we told you that a powerful knife-crime play that has had a terrific impact on pupils in city schools in recent years had been scrubbed from planned funding by the Edinburgh Integration Joint Board at short notice. Following our report, we’re happy to report that performances are now being funded by the city council and planned for pupils across 16 high schools in the city. BALINGSON was written by award-winning Scottish playwright Jennifer Adam and directed by Strange Town artistic director Steven Small, and explores the consequences of carrying a knife through the story of a 15-year-old boy. Performances are also on at the Traverse Theatre tomorrow and Saturday.

RAMBLING ON: Leith actor Mark Bonnar is to team up again with his Shetland co-star Ashley Jensen in a new BBC sitcom Rambling. Written by Burnistoun’s Iain Connell, the new series see them play an ‘odd couple’ pair in a comedy set in rain sodden Scotland.

DROPPING OFF: The council is looking to increase the number of coach parking and drop-off points around the city to cope with growing demand from tour operators. Coaches are generally directed to Castle Terrace, Regent Road and Inverleith Place, but new drop-off and parking points are being considered, including on Chambers Street, Market Street, King’s Stables Road, Grassmarket, Jeffrey Street, Queen Street, London Road.

NEW TOWN APARTHOTEL: Former offices at 16-26 Forth Street would be converted into a 53-bed aparthotel under plans to be considered by city councillors next Wednesday. The number of beds proposed has been cut from 90 following widespread objections. Council planning officials are recommending the new plans from Limetree Developments are approved.

SOUNDS OF WINTER: Irish singer Heidi Talbot, the Ivor Novello-nominated Boo Hewerdine and Scottish indie pair Sacred Paw are among the headliners at the Soundhouse Winter Festival. Returning to the Traverse Theatre on November 26-30, the festival wil kick off with a free performance by The Soundhouse Choir to celebrate its 10th anniversary.

Your Pick of the (Cultural) Pops

Greetings, Pop Pickers!

What a delightfully bonkers week in the entertainment business. While poor Ed Sheeran gazes miserably at the dismal ticket sales for his tour in the messy wake of Macklemore-gate, and Fife’s own KT Tunstall fronts the high-tech charge to bring digital holographic avatars of touring musicians to a venue near you, Edinburgh is keeping things flesh, blood, and stone.

It’s a big ‘no thank you’ to virtual tours as the capital prepares to throw open its doors - quite literally - for Doors Open Days this weekend. With 21 new buildings joining the roster of unlocked spaces across the city, from historic vaults and grand civic halls to hidden courtyards, it’s an unbeatable annual excuse to go poking your nose into Edinburgh’s best-kept architectural gems.

Inside our auditoriums, the autumn momentum is building fast. This week’s chart serves up the return of lunchtime theatre royalty, pink-hued Broadway comedy, a classical dream team under the Queen’s Hall lights, world-class dance bedding in a reborn stage, and what is indisputably the Scottish theatrical event of the season.

Let’s count them down...

Honourable Mentions: Gilbert O’Sullivan, Revel, NT Live, Wallace & RoboCop

Bubbling just outside the top five, there is a mouthwatering spread across town. Over at The Queen’s Hall (September 25th), you might still manage to snare a late ticket for veteran chart-topper Gilbert O’Sullivan; if you fancy seeing the Record Mirror 1972 Male Singer of the Year dispensing timeless gems from his hit-strewn songbook, click that link sooner rather than later, as at 79 we shouldn’t take too many more live runs for granted. Across town at The Studio on Saturday 26th, Company Chordelia presents Revel, a touching and witty dance-theatre duet exploring aging and memory that reviewer Cath Coutts, writing for independent arts review site The Quinntessential Review, praised in her review of its St Andrews premiere.

Down on Home Street on Sunday 27th, The Cameo screens the Director’s Cut of Paul Verhoeven’s RoboCop - one of the few childhood favourites of mine (despite that strict 18 rating!) to genuinely stand the test of time. That’s largely down to a satirical edge skewering corporate greed that feels every bit as pertinent now as it did in 1987. As dystopian sci-fi action-adventures go, it really doesn’t get any better.

Finally, heading into The Studio next week (September 30th – October 3rd) is Rob Drummond’s stirring musical Wallace, exploring Scotland’s mythic rebel.

New in at Number 5 is... A Play, a Pie and a Pint: The Whaler’s Wife (Traverse Theatre, September 29th – October 3rd)

Taking the fifth spot is the welcome return of Scotland’s undisputed hotbed of new dramatic writing. The legendary A Play, a Pie and a Pint kicks off its Edinburgh autumn diet at the Traverse (with an upcoming run at the Assembly Roxy still to drop), and if you have the time to catch even one of this season’s lunchtime offerings, you really should. Opening the slate is Izzy Gray’s The Whaler’s Wife, directed by Beth Morton. Set in 1820s Orkney, it blends sea shanties, ribald humour, and folklore as three rebellious women keep their coastal community afloat while the men hunt across icy Arctic waters. If you need proof of the institution’s pedigree, look no further than the above-mentioned Wallace over at The Studio - another proud PP&P alumnus! Pair forty-five minutes of cracking new drama with a warm pie and a pint, and you have an unbeatable lunch hour ahead…

New in at Number 4 is... Legally Blonde The Musical (Edinburgh Playhouse, September 29th – October 3rd)

Bursting into fourth place in a whirlwind of pink scented paper is a Broadway and West End juggernaut. Directed by Nikolai Foster (also responsible for recent stop-by Annie), this lavish new touring production lands on Greenside Place led by Amber Davies, who looks to be an inspired bit of casting for sorority queen turned legal eagle Elle Woods. Local unpaid professionals Allegro knocked it clean out of the park when I reviewed their exuberant run at the Church Hill Theatre for The Quinntessential Review back in 2022, setting a towering standard for community theatre in the capital. Let’s see if this star-studded, multi-million-pound national tour can match their infectious charm! Expect razor-sharp choreography, killer comic timing, and unstoppable earworms.

New in at Number 3 is... Dunedin Consort: Vienna and Beyond (The Queen’s Hall, September 27th)

Snatching the bronze medal is an unmissable evening of sublime classical artistry. Scotland’s Grammy-nominated Dunedin Consort are world-class on any given evening, but toss piano royalty Angela Hewitt into the mix - directing from the keyboard for Mozart’s sparkling Piano Concerto No. 9 “Jeunehomme” - and you will struggle to find a more tantalising classical concert anywhere in the UK this Sunday. Alongside C.P.E. Bach and Beethoven’s punchy First Symphony, this promises pure magic under the Queen’s Hall arches.

Dropping to Number 2 is... Lullaby (King’s Theatre, September 24th – 26th)

Slipping one spot from the summit, you still have a fleeting chance this weekend to catch the multi-million-pound restored King’s Theatre put through its dramatic paces. Seeing Jasmin Vardimon’s elite ensemble of dancers test the limits of physical theatre on the Old Lady’s freshly levelled, unraked flat stage is a thrill in itself. Reimagining her acclaimed 2003 breakthrough piece set inside an eerie hospital ward, Lullaby marries gravity-defying athletic movement with biting satirical wit and deep emotional resonance. If you want to celebrate the venue’s grand reopening while taking in contemporary dance of international calibre, grab one of the remaining seats before Saturday’s final curtain.

Straight in at Number 1 is... The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Royal Lyceum Theatre, October 2nd – 18th)

See how Gayle Rankin looks as Miss Jean Brodie in this National Theatre of Scotland video of her photoshoot with fashion photographer Rankin

Taking the top spot of the pops this week, this is without shadow of a doubt the biggest stage event in Scotland this autumn, never mind the town! Muriel Spark’s iconic Edinburgh novel comes home in a powerhouse co-production uniting the National Theatre of Scotland, The Royal Lyceum, and Pitlochry Festival Theatre. Adapted by playwright David Harrower and directed by Vicky Featherstone, the production stars the formidable Gayle Rankin as the fiercely charismatic, dangerous schoolmistress who famously commands her impressionable “crème de la crème” at the Marcia Blaine School. Fresh from a stellar turn in The Incomer opposite Domhnall Gleeson, and with Broadway (Cabaret) and House of the Dragon under her belt, Rankin stepping into Brodie’s shoes just a stone’s throw from Spark’s own school haunts is theatrical gold dust. Brilliant stuff!

And that’s your Top 5!

From Muriel Spark’s finest hours and Elle Woods’ courtroom triumphs to Angela Hewitt’s keyboard fireworks and the physical wizardry on the King’s new flat boards, our stages are positively spoiling us rotten. Get those seats booked, take a wander through a few historic civic doorways this weekend, and let me know in the comments what you’ll be catching under the footlights!

Until next week: Stay bright!

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Inside the home of one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers

by llona Amos

In a large warehouse not far from Edinburgh you’ll find hundreds of unremarkable-looking cabinets, all lined up in neat, orderly rows. The air inside has a particular smell, or perhaps it’s more like an absence of smell – sort of sterile with a plasticky hint. In some areas there is a constant background noise, something akin to the ambience on an aeroplane with the air-con turned up full. In others there are big tanks and pipes you could imagine in a dairy. And there’s not much sign of movement, save for the images flashing across a few big screens showing work that has taken place here.

But this sense of stillness belies the massive level of activity going on within these racks, which contain what could be thought of as Britain’s mega-brain.

We’re at the EPCC (Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre) at the University of Edinburgh’s campus in Midlothian, home to the UK’s current national supercomputer. Known as ARCHER2, it has been used by academics for myriad projects, some of them world-changing – from aiding the discovery of drugs for treating Covid-19 to simulating earthquakes and maximising the efficiency of wind turbines and jet engines.

But things are about to get even more exciting. Construction is well under way on a new building that will soon house the next national supercomputer, a vastly more powerful system that will allow scientists and engineers to tackle even more complex problems.

The new machine, which is yet to be named, will be 50 times more powerful than ARCHER2 – capable of delivering an exaflop of calculations every second. That’s a quintillion, or billion-billion (which looks like this: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000), compared to ARCHER2’s 20 million-billion. It will be among the most powerful in the world – China’s LineShine is currently number one, with just over two exaflops.

Professor Mark Parsons is director of the EPCC and has been pushing hard to get the new supercomputer, which is owned by UK Research and Innovation, based at the university. He and his team are delighted that their expertise and leadership in high-performance computing and artificial intelligence (AI) have been recognised, with the UK government awarding £750 million of funding to make it happen.

“We are at this amazing moment in the development of computing,” Parsons said. “Britain has always punched way above its weight in scientific research – we’re absolutely world-leading in many areas. To keep us relevant, we have to invest at an infrastructure level.”

UK minister for artificial intelligence Kanishka Narayan said the new supercomputer was “a decisive step” in building the sovereign computing power the country needs to stay in control of its future and science.

“This is what will unlock the next generation of breakthroughs,” he said.

So what does a national supercomputer do?

It allows researchers to quickly perform hugely complex calculations and studies that would take humans days, months or even years to carry out, as well as creating simulations of processes that would be impossible or too expensive to study in a real-life scenario. Research carried out at the EPCC is made available to the wider scientific community as well as businesses, helping to drive innovation and progress.

“The new computer will do traditional modelling and simulation, but it will also do AI for science-type modelling and simulation,” Parsons explains.

“AI is not just about ChatGPT or whatever. There are huge programmes of AI for science where we’re using the techniques of AI to solve scientific problems we have never been able to solve before. And the UK needs that capability.”

The EPCC has already handled too many cutting-edge projects to list, according to the professor, but much of the work could be globally significant.

“We might be looking for new drugs and how they will interact with cells. To do that, we’ve got to understand how to select candidate molecules, and we do that with modelling and simulation,” Parsons explains, pointing to a video screen showing a penicillin molecule interacting with a cell.

“What we’re trying to do is, using our understanding of chemistry and physics and biochemical processes, model that in the computer. Then we can compare the two.

“If they’re the same, we know we understand the processes. If they’re different, we don’t. And the more we understand the processes, the better we can understand other molecules that aren’t penicillin that we have maybe not even created before.”

Data centre controversy

The professor is keen to point out the difference between the supercomputer and the raft of hyperscale AI data centres that are being planned across the country – and causing significant concern among communities, with fears over their impacts on the environment, the electricity grid and local quality of life.

“The technologies used by us and the hyperscalers in terms of the basic computing bits and bobs are the same or very similar,” he says. “The difference is what you use that for, and the scale of the system.

“ARCHER2 is a 4MW system, using about twice the amount of power as Edinburgh Airport. Some of the hyperscales are 500MW or even 1GW.

“So these are at a completely different scale to the sort of research computers that we’re providing for the scientific community. Even the new national supercomputer will only be around 20MW. There’s a distinction between the needs of scientific computing and the needs of the hyperscales.”

Dr Kat Jones is director of the charity Action to Protect Rural Scotland, which has been campaigning hard to get planning guidelines put in place before the latest proposed hyperscale schemes get built. She has welcomed the new supercomputer coming to the capital, describing it as exactly the type of technology that Scotland needs.

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A cycling city is the vehicle to a wealthier, more equal city. Not just GDP and wages, but the kind of wealth that makes people happy: opportunities for those struggling, kids allowed to be kids, a lower cost of living, longer and healthier lives.

And happiness can be measured. People in Edinburgh and Glasgow who cycle to work are around 15% less likely to be prescribed antidepressants or anxiety medication, and exercise is roughly 1.5 times more effective against depression and anxiety than medication or counselling.

Edinburgh and the Lothians are Scotland’s fastest-growing population, and the Capital is an economic powerhouse that draws millions of tourists a year. Yet one foodbank in Leith has fed more than 44,000 people since 2014, nearly 8,000 of them children. A cycling city will not fix that. But it cuts the cost of the journeys nobody can avoid.

The Manifesto

Continuing to build safe, segregated cycling routes and funding fantastic programmes like Bikeability go without saying. But this is how Edinburgh can tackle congestion and poverty together.

This manifesto targets journeys that cannot be replaced by walking and is aimed at three groups: children getting to school, commuters driving to work, and households whose car dependency pushes them into poverty.

1. School Streets at every primary, and routes safe enough for an eight-year-old

2. Cycle networks to the train stations in the commuter towns

3. Cross-boundary cycle superhighways

The Carrot and The Stick

4. A paid-to-cycle scheme, the carrot

5. A congestion charge, the stick and the funder

The Mechanism

6. A regional transport authority

7. Multi-year active travel funding

8. 10% of the transport budget for active travel

9. The sustainable transport hierarchy actually followed

The Day the Cars Stopped

10. An annual car-free day, launched at the 2027 Grand Départ of the Tour de France

The Alternative

Meet Katie: P7, a creative and aspiring netball player, and until recently a junior road safety officer.

She would cycle to school tomorrow if we let her. ‘Bikes are relatively fast; they are a form of exercise, and I will get fresh air.’ She goes by car because somewhere between her mum’s house and the school gates is ‘a narrow, busy road which is inappropriate for pedestrians and cyclists’. Improving cycling infrastructure, like dedicated lanes and safe crossings, could make this route safe enough for Katie and classmates to walk or cycle, addressing safety concerns that currently prevent many from doing so.

Those are the findings of a feasibility study, not a primary school pupil.

Her school, in the south of Edinburgh, is one of only 14 of the city’s 91 primaries with a School Street, the road outside closed to traffic at each end of the day. Near the gates she feels safe: a side street, “not many cars”, signage telling drivers to ease off. Quiet route, low traffic, managed speeds, three of the conditions the design guidance asks for, observed by a P7.

What stops her is everything before that. The safe network is not there yet.

She did not put up with it, either. She stood for the road safety post because her school had nothing telling drivers to slow down, and named her dangers precisely: speeding, and cyclists never taught to ride. The signage is there now.

Katie, we salute you for your services to road safety.

Chris Bruntlett of the Dutch Cycling Embassy, whose book, “Building the Cycling City”, inspired this series, gives every city the same advice: “Start with your captive audience, because kids can’t drive.” The school run is one of the shortest trips a household makes, yet up to a third of morning traffic is parents delivering children to the gate. The number of kids being driven to school has never been higher.

So build three things. First, School Streets at every primary, starting where the Walk Wheel Cycle Trust maps the streets that are both deprived and dangerous: West Pilton, Craigmillar, Wester Hailes, Niddrie. The families and children want to walk and cycle; the streets are the barrier. A review of more than 80 studies put it plainly: children did not choose to disappear; the streets were designed to exclude them to prevent road deaths.

Second, improve cycle networks to the train stations in the commuter towns. Around half of Dutch rail passengers arrive by bike, and at the far end the railway rents you the next one. At Musselburgh, Eskbank and Bathgate, 30 to 44% arrive by car and just 4 to 11% by bike.

Third, cross-boundary cycle superhighways for the roughly 63,000 who drive into Edinburgh daily. Most Lothian towns sit 8 to 16 kilometres out: on an e-bike, 25 to 45 minutes, and no bypass queue. The Netherlands are currently building thousands of kilometres of them, and they seem to know what they are doing.

Give drivers alternatives.

And the gain lands on the driver, not the cyclist. Every extra minute of commuting lowers job satisfaction. It worsens mental health, with one exception: people who walk or cycle do not lose their leisure-time satisfaction the way drivers do. Car congestion costs drivers literally days each year. The bike does not just move you. It gives you your life back.

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