Theatre style hall and concert venue in church. Church is accessible from Johnston Terrace and the Hall below is accessed from Victoria Terrace (apart from disabled access which is possible from Johnston Terrace).

Jonathan includes Satie’s Gymnopedie, Bach, and Turlough O’Carolan. Brouwer’s Cuban rhythms contrast with Koshkin’s extraordinary Usher Waltz, balanced by Tarrega – and expect surprises. ‘Jonathan Prag’s lunchtime guitar recital is a quiet gem... absolutely recommended’ (Herald).

Classical Guitar Jonathan Prag

Set firmly in unglamorous 1980s Leith, Trainspotting has burst through stage, film and musical genres, dodging the forces of orthodoxy and censorship. But is it just scurrilous punk, junk, transgressional entertainment that got lucky? Bell reveals how this hard-to-read and on-location book tells truths that need to be told. And how it's everyone's business. Author of 'Choose Life, Choose Leith' and living in Leith since 1980, he brings street-level wisdom, erudite research and a good dash of humour to the Trainspotting phenomenon. 'Great study from a serious Trainspotting scholar' (Irvine Welsh).

ScotlandsFest: Choose Life Choose Leith – Trainspotting on Location

Mathematical sheep? Navigating dogs? Architectural pigs? If you go down to the farm today you’re in for a big surprise! Helen Percy, the Highland Shepherdess, will delight all nature and animal lovers with her books Skirly Crag and Whistlebare. The creatures that share her kitchen – wild or tame, house trained or destructive – will steal your heart. But be prepared to cry as well as to laugh. She brought her dog, her duck, and her horse to the launch of Skirly Crag in 2025, so put on your wellies and come along to the farmyard!

ScotlandsFest: Farmyard Follies

Join Stuart McHardy, author of Scotland’s Geomythography, and look at ancient Scotland through new eyes. Through a lifetime of research as a musician and storyteller, combined with decades of teaching, McHardy has forged a new approach to understanding Scotland's past. Combining archaeology and history with place-name and landscape analysis, and drawing information from oral tradition, he has found evidence to reveal how our ancient forebears understood their world. Behind modern beliefs and assumptions lies a network of local and national cultural treasure that has much to teach us in our ever-changing world.

ScotlandsFest: Ancient Voices, Living Landscape – Scotland’s Geomythography

Henry Dundas, James Gillespie, George Watson. Scots made fortunes transporting so many people into slavery. So why do we still distance ourselves from this truth? For generations, the Scots prospered by using their human property to fund fabulous country homes, invest in ship building, iron smelting and coal mining. They ran a vicious propaganda campaign to protect the practice. But Scotland’s role in the slave trade remains a taboo. Join Kate Phillips, author of Bought and Sold: Scotland, Jamaica and Slavery, as she uncovers Scotland's dark past.

ScotlandsFest: Fortunes from Flesh – Scotland and Slavery

What did the BBC ever do for television? Robin Cairns, Fringe veteran, tells the story of television's inventor in story and original songs. John Logie Baird's son-of-the-manse roots in Helensburgh and his early life and money struggles led to the pioneering discovery of TV. Continually frustrated by John Reith, dismissive boss of the BBC, fighting giant corporations like Marconi, helped by King George V but closed down by Hitler and enjoying a spicy and irregular love life, John Logie Baird comes alive in this entertaining and informative brand-new musical debuting at the Edinburgh Fringe.

John Logie Baird – The Musical

Donald Dewar, Scotland's inaugural First Minister, battled long and hard to establish the Scottish Parliament. Yet, despite the vision proclaimed at its opening in July 1999, the Parliament has become mired in constitutional wrangling. Where has it all gone wrong and who is to blame? The media, for inflating unrealistic expectations? Dewar, for failing to outline a new vision for Scotland? Or the Labour Party, for underestimating the rise of the SNP? Mark Peel, Dewar’s biographer, charts the fluctuating fortunes of his career and assesses the impact of his premature death.

ScotlandsFest: Donald Dewar – An Incomplete Legacy?

What is it about Scottish dancing that gets people the world over in such a spin? The catchy music? The colourful gear? The fun of formations like teapots and helicopters?  In Heel for Heel, writer and reeler Cindy Gray celebrates the enduring legacy of all the genres, from the ancient Highland Fling to its successors: including Scottish Country Dancing, Step Dance and ceilidhs. Her book radiates with the energy and enthusiasm of dancers going Heel for Heel, like the guests at Mairi’s Wedding. Expect fancy footwork and dynamic photos!

ScotlandsFest: Heel for Heel – Scottish Dance Fever

Archie Macpherson has been writing and broadcasting about the beautiful game for 60 years. From triumphalism to downright despondency, from the 16mm film pictures of the sixties to the digital age, Scotland’s premier football commentator has seen and felt it all. In today’s disfiguring financial landscape, Scottish football faces unprecedented challenges. Is our appreciation of the game cheapened by increased access via technology? What does the future hold for Scottish football? If anyone knows, Macpherson does.

ScotlandsFest: A Scottish Football Odyssey

Outlander has generated global interest in the history, languages and landscapes of Scotland. From the tragedy of Culloden, to American Independence and early Scottish interaction with indigenous peoples in North America, and, more problematically, the Atlantic slave trade, the books and TV series have mapped out Scotland's contribution to world history. Outlander has been crucial for tourism and heritage. Its themes have captured the imagination of a global audience. Join the editors of Outlander and Scotland to find out what this time-travelling series can teach us about Scottish history and Scotland today?

ScotlandsFest: Between the Stones: Scotland Through Outlander 

Martyn Bennett was an artist ahead of his time. Piper, violinist, composer, producer, DJ – his radical blend of tradition and technology created an audacious new sound that was uniquely his own. Gary West, Bennett's biographer and author of Brave New Music, and BJ Stewart, the musician’s official photographer and close friend, uncover his enduring legacy, the intersection of folk, classical and electronic music, place and nature as musical inspiration: from mountains and mosh pits.

ScotlandsFest: Brave New Music – The Martyn Bennett Story

‘There is no such thing as Scottish art, only art in Scotland which is part of a European tradition’ says Richard Demarco CBE, who has been to every Edinburgh Festival since its inception in 1947. The festival's origins are firmly rooted in an international outlook, one that Demarco, a cultural pilgrim, continues to embody. Demarco’s Europe, the third of a trilogy written in collaboration with Edinburgh-based journalist Roddy Martine, is dedicated to the importance of Scotland’s ongoing cultural engagement with continental Europe. With existential threats all around, can art provide a healing balm?

ScotlandsFest: Art Without Borders – Demarco’s Europe

Join Gerda Stevenson, author of Cat Wumman: Tales o Nine Lives, as she mesmerises with her contemporary retellings of folk tales from Scotland, Japan, the Mississippi swamps and Inuit tribes, blending storytelling and song – over tea and coffee. 'In Stevenson’s hands, her beautifully crafted and wonderfully speakable Scots seems like a language reborn to meet the deep civilisational challenge of our time... a book of mighty and magical stories simply and superbly told, that marks its author out as one of the great champions of the Scots tongue' (Scotsman).


ScotlandsFest: Tea and Tales

What has a quarter century of devolution meant for Scotland? The "Scottish Question" will always be "unfinished business" according to James Mitchell and Henry McLeish. So, what’s next? What are the social and economic challenges and opportunities that lie ahead? What do we need to do to make our institutions and politics fit for purpose? In a culture of political stalemates and "permanent campaigning", Former First Minister Henry McLeish, responsible for devolution, and Professor James Mitchell of Edinburgh University, have an idea or two to brighten Scotland’s future...

ScotlandsFest: Unfinished Business – Scotland’s Political Crossroads

Artists have long appreciated Iona's natural beauty, its exquisite colours and the quality of its ever-changing light. Photographer, writer and longtime visitor to Iona, join Barbara Sellars, author of Iona with Love as she shares her own passion for this place and her sensory experiences of the island's varied moods and details – from sunshine to storm, coast to hinterland, jewel-like pebbles to flowering machair and from the colours of dawn to the last of the light on the sand. Enjoy a rich and evocative expression of this island's intrinsic loveliness.

ScotlandsFest: Iona with Love

How distinctive is Scotland’s history from that of other countries? What was happening in Europe when the Scots won at Bannockburn, or in Russia when Mary, Queen of Scots lost her head? When St Columba was in Iona, what was Muhammad doing in the Arabian desert? From Columba to Robert the Bruce, John Knox to Nicola Sturgeon – join Anna Groundwater, author of Connecting Scotland's History to hear 2,000 years of Scottish history located within the global.

ScotlandsFest: Talking Two Millennia (of Scotland’s History)

Join Roger Emmerson, author of Land of Stone and Scotland in 100 Buildings, as he invites you into his 40-year search for the Scottishness of Scottish architecture. It begins before Scotland was Scotland. Before architecture was architecture. Between the mountain and the sky. Between the land and the river. An antinomy, an antisyzygy, a parallax. Tracing a path from Celtic culture, through Scots colloquialisms, to the ideas of Kant, Thomson, Gregory Smith and Žižek: Emmerson has uncovered some answers. But the search continues...

ScotlandsFest: In Search of Scottish Architecture

Join Janis Mackay, author of On a Northern Shore, in the fertile place where ancient Scottish folklore and new feisty fiction meet – where love is hampered by ghosts and the restless surge of the sea is always in hearing. A love story, steeped in Celtic folklore and set in the windswept coastal shores of the far north of Scotland, On a Northern Shore takes you right there: where the gull’s lonely cry and the seal’s song can tear your heart. Beautifully written. Unputdownable. Atmospheric and intriguing.

ScotlandsFest: Northern Spirits, Restless Hearts

Join Mary Craig, author of Agnes Finnie, and step beyond the myths into a chilling world where whispers became accusations and accusations became death sentences. Uncover the terrifying reality of Scotland’s witch hunts, where zealous churchmen and unforgiving courts turned fear into deadly power. Hear the true stories: neighbours betraying neighbours, confessions forced in the shadows, and lives destroyed in the name of belief. This is history at its most brutal. Feel the tension. Question the justice. Confront the fear. This event will leave you questioning, would you have survived?

ScotlandsFest: Scotland’s Darkest Past

Alan Riach’s new poems centre on the question; what – and who – can you really trust, these days? What the Sea Gives was described in 2023 by Bard-Google's AI chatbot as: ‘A collection of poems that explores themes of nature, memory, and the Scottish landscape. Riach’s poems are lyrical and atmospheric, and they offer a profound appreciation for the beauty and mystery of the natural world'. In 2023, neither title nor book existed – but they do now! Delivered live, in person, not by hologram.

ScotlandsFest: Trust Issues, Fake News, Real Poems

Submarines, tunnels, train rides and a new pair of false teeth! Nothing is off-limits as one woman crosses borders en route to the World Cup – or at least to the nearest pub with a big screen! With a showcase of the poems from her collections – Love Goes North and a brand new World Cup edition of the celebrated We Are Scottish Football – there will be tears, humour, despair, goals and celebration, all shoehorned into a lively hour of poetic mastery. Hold onto your sporrans, you’re not going to want to miss this!

ScotlandsFest: No Scotland No Party!

Join Alan Spence – former Edinburgh Makar and author of the cult-classic Glasgow Zen and upcoming sequel A Wee Bit Zen – for conversation and short-form poetry from a trickster with words and a mesmerising performer of his own work. Haiku, found poems, sound poems, text poems, puns, one-liners, overheard word-on-the-street poems, everyday zen, timeless poems of the here and now – poignant, insightful and laugh-out-loud funny. 'Spence is a calm and necessary visionary' (Ali Smith). 'Poetry with the gloves off' (Liz Lochhead).

St Columba's by the Castle Scottish Episcopal Church

About this venue

Spaces at this venue

Contact details