Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of Figures
- List of Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The Cultural Resort of Europe: The Creation of the Festival, c. 1944–1947
- 3 Cultural challenge: The Creation of a ‘Fringe’, 1947–1955
- 4 Convergence of Cultures: New developments in the Arts, 1956–1962
- 5 Culture and (Im)morality: The Year of the Happening, 1963
- 6 Cultural Explosion: The Arts and Moral Conflict in Edinburgh in the High Sixties, 1964–1967
- 7 Cultural Crisis? Protest and Reaction, 1968–1970
- 8 Conclusion
- Appendix 1 List of Lord Provosts/Edinburgh Festival Society Chairs and Festival Artistic Directors, 1947–1970
- Appendix 2 Short Biographies of Oral History Interviewees
- Sources and Select Bibliography
- Index
6 - Cultural Explosion: The Arts and Moral Conflict in Edinburgh in the High Sixties, 1964–1967
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 April 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of Figures
- List of Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The Cultural Resort of Europe: The Creation of the Festival, c. 1944–1947
- 3 Cultural challenge: The Creation of a ‘Fringe’, 1947–1955
- 4 Convergence of Cultures: New developments in the Arts, 1956–1962
- 5 Culture and (Im)morality: The Year of the Happening, 1963
- 6 Cultural Explosion: The Arts and Moral Conflict in Edinburgh in the High Sixties, 1964–1967
- 7 Cultural Crisis? Protest and Reaction, 1968–1970
- 8 Conclusion
- Appendix 1 List of Lord Provosts/Edinburgh Festival Society Chairs and Festival Artistic Directors, 1947–1970
- Appendix 2 Short Biographies of Oral History Interviewees
- Sources and Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In April 1966, London was dubbed capital of the world by America's Time magazine. In the front page feature, ‘London: The Swinging City’, Time spoke of ‘how the capital had reinvented itself from being the centre of a once-mighty empire into a city that now set the social and cultural markers for the rest of the world’. To a certain extent, Scotland's capital had also reinvented itself. Since the inaugural event of August 1947, the Festival had transformed Edinburgh, a city not previously renowned for its encouragement of the arts, into a world stage for culture, one of the ‘greatest of the world's gatherings devoted to the Arts’. By May 1966, the Scottish actor and director Tom Fleming felt justified in commenting that ‘something approaching a miracle has happened in Edinburgh’. In June 1966, Irving Wardle described an ‘altered Edinburgh’ in New Society:
In the past five years the place has undergone startling changes. At the end of the fifties there was only one commercial art gallery open all through the year; now there are several dozen. Boutiques have been burgeoning along Rose Street, discotheques springing up, and folk singers pouring in. The result to date may not be enough to excite another rave from Time magazine, but the change is unmistakeable – however firmly the city elders preserve the granite façade, and however the official Festival may have ignored it.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Edinburgh FestivalsCulture and Society in Post-war Britain, pp. 151 - 190Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2013