True, the city’s many summer festivals each maintain their own identities. And yet ‘The Festival’ has stuck as a shorthand which captures the truly eclectic experience of ‘doing Edinburgh’ which has made the city’s very name synonymous with world-leading culture and performance.

This book is the first to tell the complete history of the Edinburgh Festival. Arts writer David Pollock paints an extraordinary portrait of the growth, glory years and struggles of this global cultural phenomenon. He introduces a wide cast of key individuals and shows, including Fleabag, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, Billy Connolly, Emma Thompson, Stephen Fry, Joseph Beuys, The Fall and Six The Musical.

The Edinburgh Festival: A Biography provides a unique perspective on the social and cultural history of Scotland and its capital in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. It will delight and intrigue all who have experience of the greatest festival in the world.