The Scotsman has been proud to cover the Edinburgh festivals since they began in 1947, and as the festivals have grown, our coverage has grown too. We are not aware of any other daily newspaper, anywhere in the world, which produces a greater volume of professional arts criticism in a single month than we do in a typical August. This summer, we’re planning to bring you as much of the magic as we possibly can via our team of specialist writers. You can find out more about our reviewers below.
Festival Coverage and Reviewer Biographies
From tomorrow, 3 August, as the Edinburgh International Festival and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe get under way, we will once again be publishing our daily Festival guides in The Scotsman and Scotland on Sunday, packed with interviews, features, reviews and more. Later in the month, we’ll also be adding our usual comprehensive coverage of the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the Edinburgh Art Festival, and the Edinburgh International Film Festival.
We’ll also be celebrating the best new writing on the Fringe with our long-running Fringe First Awards, co-sponsored this year by Queen Margaret University and Edinburgh Napier University. First established in 1973 by former Scotsman arts editor Allen Wright, the awards have since helped launch countless careers. You can find out more about this year’s Fringe Firsts here and more about how the awards work here.
If you’d like regular updates from this year’s festivals delivered direct to your inbox, for the next month our weekly Arts & Culture newsletter will be going daily. You can sign up for free at Scotsman Newsletter.
And if you’re not already a Scotsman subscriber and would like unlimited access to the website, we’re also offering a special Edinburgh Festival subscription discount, with 40 per cent off annual digital subscriptions. Alternatively, you can give us a try with day passes and monthly subscriptions from just £1. For details, visit Scotsman Subscriptions.
Whether you’re planning to be in Edinburgh this August or not, we hope you enjoy our coverage of the world’s biggest arts festival.
Roger Cox, arts editor
Reviewer Biographies
Kelly Apter
Kelly Apter is an arts journalist based in Edinburgh. She has been The Scotsman's dance critic since 2000, and also writes for The List magazine, is a regular guest on BBC Radio Scotland's Review show, and is a mentor for emerging dance writers at Aerowaves' Spring Forward festival.
Josephine Balfour-Oatts
Josephine Balfour-Oatts is a freelance arts journalist and editor. Based in Edinburgh, she regularly contributes as a critic to The Skinny and the Times Literary Supplement, with a particular focus on experimental performance, and theatre-based texts. She graduated from the University of Edinburgh with an MSc in Creative Writing in 2021, and is currently preparing to begin a PhD in English Literature, also at the University of Edinburgh, in 2024.
Anahit Behrooz
Anahit Behrooz is a writer, editor, and critic based in Edinburgh. She is the author of BFFs: The Radical Potential of Female Friendship and works as Books Editor and Events Editor at The Skinny. Her writing has appeared in AnOther Magazine, Little White Lies, gal-dem, and The Big Issue among others.
Alexander Cohen
Alexander Cohen is a theatre and opera critic. He has been published in The Stage, The Fence, and Broadway World. He was longlisted for the 2024 Observer/Anthony Burgess Prize for Arts Journalism. At 24 he is the youngest member of the UK Critics’ Circle Drama Section.
Kate Copstick
Kate Copstick first reviewed for The Scotsman in 1999. Since then she has written on comedy and the arts for everyone from the Observer to the Erotic Review. She has sat on judging panels for So You Think You’re Funny, The (then) Perrier Award and was part of the inaugural panel of judges on the Malcolm Hardee Award.
Ashley Davies
Ashley Davies is a freelance arts journalist with 25 years of experience on national newspapers. She specialises in comedy interviews and reviews, and has been a judge on a number of competitions, including the Edinburgh Comedy Awards.
Andrew Eaton-Lewis
Andrew Eaton-Lewis has been Edinburgh festivals editor for The Scotsman and Scotland on Sunday since 2014 when he left a long-running job as group arts editor for both publications to begin a freelance career. He has since worked as a festival director & programmer, theatre producer, musician, writer, and PR consultant; his main focus is supporting artists to develop new creative projects.
Mark Fisher
Mark Fisher is a theatre critic, editor, feature writer, and freelance journalist based in Edinburgh. He has written about theatre in Scotland since the late-1980s, contributing theatre reviews, interviews, arts features, and travel articles to newspapers and magazines in Scotland and all over the world. His books include The Edinburgh Fringe Survival Guide and How to Write About Theatre.
Rory Ford
Rory Ford is a freelance arts and lifestyle journalist who since 1990 has covered Edinburgh’s festivals for The Scotsman, the Edinburgh News, and the List as a reviewer, editor, and news reporter. He also featured in Jon Ronson’s “Critical Condition”, a Channel 4 documentary about the 1997 Perrier Awards.
Jim Gilchrist
Jim Gilchrist is an Edinburgh-based freelance writer, for many years a staff features and arts writer and columnist with The Scotsman, to which he still contributes a regular folk and jazz music column as well as reviews. He wrote the Scottish section of Celtic Music (ed. Kenny Mathieson), and co-edited, with Dr Stuart Eydmann, Dolina: An Island Girl’s Journey, the memoir of Gaelic singer, actress, and broadcaster Dolina Maclennan.
Alistair Harkness
Alistair Harkness is a freelance film critic, feature writer, Q&A host, lecturer, and broadcaster based in Glasgow. He got his start working the red carpet beat for Empire and began writing about film for The Scotsman in 2002, becoming its main critic in 2005. He can frequently be heard talking about film on BBC Radio and has hosted live Q&As with filmmakers, actors, and artists for organisations such as BAFTA, Glasgow Film, and Sonica.
David Hepburn
David Hepburn is a lifestyle journalist writing for The Scotsman and Edinburgh Evening News. He has attended the various Edinburgh festivals for the last 30 years and has previously reviewed for a number of publications including Fringe Report and Fest Magazine.
David Kettle
David Kettle has more than 25 years’ experience in music and arts journalism, including ten years at BBC Music Magazine, two years as editor at London’s South Bank Centre, and four years at The Strad magazine. He writes music criticism for The Scotsman and The Daily Telegraph, edits educational resources for Music Teacher magazine, and was programme editor for Scottish Opera and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.
Duncan Macmillan
Duncan Macmillan is Professor Emeritus of the History of Scottish Art at the University of Edinburgh and former curator of Edinburgh's Talbot Rice Gallery. He writes art criticism for The Scotsman, and is author of Painting in Scotland: the Golden Age, Scottish Art 1460-1990, and Scottish Art in the 20th Century.
Carol Main
Carol Main is director of Live Music Now Scotland and Live Music Now International Development (UK) as well as a freelance music journalist. She served almost 20 years as a board director of Edinburgh Festival Fringe and received a Herald Archangel at the 2002 Edinburgh Festival. Carol was awarded an MBE in 2015 for services to music. In April 2021, she was appointed as a member of the board of Creative Scotland.
Susan Mansfield
Susan Mansfield is a freelance arts writer, Scotsman art and theatre critic and a member of The Scotsman's Fringe First Awards team. She is also a published poet, winner of the Jack Clemo Poetry Prize 2018, and author, along with Alastair Moffat, of The Great Tapestry of Scotland: The Making of a Masterpiece.
Mary Miller
Mary Miller began her career as a concert violinist, before becoming music editor for Scotland´s national newspaper, a prominent broadcaster, and festival programmer. She established and was general and artistic director of Bergen National Opera from 2010-21, and she will lead the national celebrations for St Giles 900 in 2024. She continues to work internationally as a writer, speaker, and mentor on cultural policy.
Joyce McMillan
Joyce McMillan is The Scotsman’s chief theatre critic and also writes a political and social commentary column for the paper. She has been a political and arts columnist, theatre critic, and broadcaster for more than 30 years, living in Edinburgh and working for various Scottish and London-based newspapers.
Fergus Morgan
Fergus Morgan is an Edinburgh-based freelance arts journalist and critic, specialising in theatre. His work has appeared in The Stage, The Independent, TimeOut, WhatsOnStage, Vice, Exeunt Magazine, and elsewhere. He also publishes The Crush Bar, a popular Substack newsletter dedicated to emerging theatre artists.
Susan Nickalls
Susan Nickalls is a music critic, writer, editor, broadcaster, and film producer based in Edinburgh. She recently graduated with an MA in Creative Writing and is working on her first novel.
David Pollock
David Pollock is an arts writer based in Edinburgh. He has written about theatre for The Stage, The Scotsman, The Independent, The List, The i, The Financial Times, and others.
Jay Richardson
Jay Richardson is a Glasgow-based freelance comedy and arts journalist, with 20 years experience covering the Edinburgh Festival Fringe for The Scotsman. He also writes for British Comedy Guide, Chortle, and several national newspapers and magazines and has been published in the US, Canada, Ireland, and Australia.
David Robinson
David Robinson is a freelance writer and editor, based in Edinburgh. He was Books Editor of The Scotsman from 2000-2015, and has been a newspaper journalist all his working life. A collection of his essays and interviews titled In Cold Ink: On the Writers’ Tracks was published in 2011.
Fiona Shepherd
Fiona Shepherd is a music and arts journalist, based in Glasgow. She is the chief rock and pop critic of The Scotsman, and also writes for Scotland On Sunday, The List, and Edinburgh Festivals magazine. She is co-founder and co-director of Glasgow Music City Tours and Edinburgh Music Tours, which offer guided music-themed walking tours exploring the rich musical history of both cities.
Claire Smith
Claire Smith is a freelance journalist. She has been involved with the Fringe for many years, has been a judge for the Edinburgh Comedy Awards and the Malcolm Hardee Awards, and is a champion of the wild, the eccentric, and the downright odd.
Sally Stott
Sally Stott is a freelance writer. She has covered the Edinburgh Festival for The Scotsman for the past 15 years, read and written scripts for the BBC, and won and been shortlisted for various awards as a theatre reviewer, comedy writer, and travel journalist. She also helps architects, artists, and academics to develop and edit their writing.
Ken Walton
Ken Walton has been The Scotsman's classical music critic for more than 20 years. He has also taught music at the University of Glasgow, the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, and Hutcheson's Grammar School in Glasgow.
author Roger Cox