Plain Talk

By Mursi Saad El-Din

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On Thursday 14 October, the Paris headquarters of UNESCO announced that the organisation's city of literature award went to Edinburgh. This is the second literary tribute paid to a Scottish city; in 1996 Glasgow was chosen as the cultural capital of Europe.

It was probably in competition with Edinburgh that Glasgow first started several literary and artistic activities. Having established itself as a cultural centre of international repute, the city now hosts festivals of Celtic and international folk art and jazz , a biannual international early music festival and Mayfest. Last but not least there are the World Pipe Band Championships, held every August; it is well known that the bagpipe is the national musical instrument of Scotland...

It is quite an achievement that two cities in the same country should be declared centres of art and literature within such a short span of time. Of course, Scotland can claim a number of writers of world renown: Sir Walter Scott, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, J M Barrie and, in modern times, Muriel Spark and J K Rowling.

Edinburgh in particular has, since its early years, established itself as a leading cultural centre. It is a city famous for its publishers. As far back as 1790, Edinburgh, with a meagre population of 80,000, had no less than 16 publishing firms. Now the figures have risen to 800,000 and 80 respectively.

It also remains associated in the mind with its international theatre festival, held in August every year. I had the good fortune to attend the first Edinburgh Festival in 1947. I was at the time a young cultural attaché, and it was in this capacity that I was invited to that grand occasion. Coming as it did after the Second World War, the festival seemed to stand for the values of civilisation in a world emerging from carnage and destruction.

I even remember some of the spectacles of that first festival: the Vienna Philharmonic, the Comedie Francaise, together with leading theatrical and musical troupes. I also remember the great feeling of optimism and of hope in the future, which carried the festival aloft on a tide of good will. It was as if the festival was the embodiment, the result of the great collective sigh of relief that came with the end of the war.

It was amazing for me, at least, having seen in London the ruins resulting from the blitz, to watch people flocking to sample the rich banquet which the festival could offer. I recall with nostalgia and affection watching Bruno Walter, whom I was used to seeing during the Promenade concerts at the Albert Hall, conducting Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth), with Katherin Ferrier and Peter Peors.

But the highlight of the event for me was a chat with T S Eliot during an interval in his play Murder in the Cathedral. we spoke, I remember, about the future of poetic drama, and he was pleasantly surprised that as a student at Fouad I (now Cairo) University I had studied The Waste Land.

Apart from my regular attendance of the festival, I had other opportunities to visit Edinburgh. I was often invited by the Scottish centre of PEN to lecture on culture in Egypt. I was at the time a member of the English Centre and co- secretary, with Youssef El- Sebaie, of the Egyptian Centre. I clearly remember two wonderful Scots writers from that time: Lavinia Derwent, who wrote children's books, and Douglas Young, a leading poet and nationalist who always went round in a colourful kilt.

I shall never forget the PEN Congress in Amsterdam, where Young gave a Scottish reel dance during a garden party given for the congress by the Queen of Holland.