History
The first International Festival (and the first Edinburgh Festival Fringe, although it wasn't known as such until the following year) took place between 22 August and 11 September 1947, in the wake of the end of the Second World War, with an optimistic remit to "provide a platform for the flowering of the human spirit" and enrich the cultural life of Scotland, Britain and Europe. The founders of the Festival included Rudolf Bing, the General Manager of Glyndebourne Opera Festival, Henry Harvey Wood, the Head of the British Council in Scotland, Sidney Newman, Reid Professor of Music at Edinburgh University, and a group of civic leaders from the City of Edinburgh, in particular the Lord Provost Sir John Falconer. Bing, the moving spirit behind the enterprise, had looked at several English cities before settling on Edinburgh. The Festival has since taken place every August.
Read more about this topic: Edinburgh International Festival
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“No cause is left but the most ancient of all, the one, in fact, that from the beginning of our history has determined the very existence of politics, the cause of freedom versus tyranny.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)