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
3 - Cultural challenge: The Creation of a ‘Fringe’, 1947–1955
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
Aspiring to be ‘the Athens of the North’ once more, Edinburgh had, in the International Festival, presented an event in 1947 that emphasised ‘high culture’ and successfully attracted many of the best artists Europe had to offer to the city, at a time when austerity measures were still in force and European nations were emerging from the upheaval of the Second World War. In the run-up to the inaugural Festival, Rudolf Bing found himself going beyond the usual duties of an artistic director by organising the de-requisitioning of a number of Edinburgh hotels and negotiating the de-rationing of curtain material. With Britain in the grip of vicious rationing, the Board of Trade had had to assist by securing supplies of crockery and household goods for visitors. (A controversy also occurred when the Minister for Fuel and Power, Emanuel Shinwell, banned the floodlighting of Edinburgh Castle; a compromise, that of lighting the castle during specific hours in the evening, was reached in the face of widespread outrage). Arts impresario Richard Demarco, then a seventeen-year-old schoolboy, recalled:
I was still staggered by the idea of the castle being floodlit because remember the war had been and everything was blacked out […] There was rationing of clothes, you had coupons to buy clothes, coupons to buy food, and suddenly there was this incredible commitment to international culture.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Edinburgh FestivalsCulture and Society in Post-war Britain, pp. 42 - 77Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2013