After the explosive opening to 2018 of the fireworks display above Edinburgh Castle, Edinburgh’s Hogmanay continues with a specially commissioned story writ large in light on Edinburgh buildings.
Edinburgh kicked off the New Year with a nine-minute fireworks display above Edinburgh Castle. The “Midnight Moment” was choreographed to a specially commissioned soundscape created by Skye band Niteworks and sound designer and film composer Dan Jones in collaboration with fireworks experts Titanium.
A full capacity crowd of 75,000 were regaled by a huge range of fireworks including brand new ones called planets which have fizzy sherbet middles, while a drum solo in the middle was choreographed to showers of pink and gold arrows ricocheting into the night sky.
Concert in the Gardens headliner Rag’n’Bone Man led a rousing rendition of the traditional Auld Lang Syne.
Storm Dylan
In previous years high winds have forced the organisers to cancel the Hogmanay street party at the last minute. There were similar fears this year when Princes Street was temporarily closed to pedestrians earlier in the day after a part of a stage was blown over.
“New York King of Crime” Don Winslow has been revealed as the first headliner and “special guest” of The Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate.
The festival’s 2018 programming chair, author Lee Child, announced Winslow will join the festival’s roster of 90 authors between the 19th and 22nd July. Winslow has written 20 novels, selling over 100 million books worldwide and garnering fans such as Stephen King.
Winslow has written 20 novels, selling over 100 million books worldwide and garnering fans such as Stephen King
His latest book, The Force (HarperCollins), published in July, is being adapted by Fox for the silver screen in March 2019, with “Logan”’s James Mangold slated to direct and Pulitzer Prize winner David Mamet attached as screenwriter. Leonardo DiCaprio is meanwhile set to star in a £40m Hollywood adaptation of another of his books, The Cartel, to be directed by Ridley Scott.
“I’m really thrilled to be coming to the UK,” said Winslow. “I’ve heard great things about the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival from my dear friend Lee Child who was kind enough to invite me to come this year. It’s always great to hang out with Lee and I look forward to meeting the authors, readers and booksellers who will be attending the festival.”
Child, who lives in New York, said: “I have access to people in America so we’re going to see some big names from America, and I think people are going to be thrilled with the line-up when we reveal the full list of names, I think everyone’s going to say ‘wow’.”
Simon Theakston, title sponsor and executive director of T&R Theakston, said 2018 was shaping up to be “a very special year indeed”. In the past the festival has featured notable crime writers such as JK Rowling writing as Robert Galbraith, Ian Rankin, Jo Nesbo, PD James and Ruth Rendell.
“As a festival that seems to get better each year it’s hard to know how to top the previous year, but 2018 looks like it will be a very special year indeed,” he said. “It’s a testament to the programming committee, chaired by the legendary Lee Child, and Harrogate International Festivals that the event has secured Harrogate at the centre of the international literary map.”
The festival was co-founded by crime author Val McDermid, agent Jane Gregory and arts charity, Harrogate International Festivals in 2003.
It’s a show with a subtitle, this powerful piece of storytelling combined with installation art, playing around 12 locations in Edinburgh city centre through the dark winter month between New Year’s Day and Burns Night. Its other name is New Year’s Resurrection; and its text, by the great crime novelist Val McDermid, is not only a tribute to a city famous for its dramatic clashes between elegant enlightenment and dark criminality, but a plea to resurrect the reputation of generations of women writers who have too often been forgotten, in the litany of Edinburgh’s famous male literary stars. Message From The Skies, various sites, Edinburgh *** So we begin at Parliament Square with a brief introduction to the dark-and-light horror story of Burke and Hare, before visiting the National Library for a list of male writers, suddenly interrupted. Then, at Lady Stair’s Close, we finally meet the central character of the evening’s entertainment, the 19th century novelist Susan Edmonstone Ferrier who – with some help later on from the inimitable Muriel Spark – leads us through a journey from the Mound (where we cheerfully watch the Scott Monument crumble), to Calton Road, York Place and the New Town, where Ferrier lived out the last years of her life.
