Susan Mansfield

Valeria Luiselli discusses her experimental novel Beginning Middle End, which follows a writer and her daughter in Sicily while exploring motherhood, divorce, memory loss, aging, myth and the meaning of beginnings and endings. The novel’s fragmented structure incorporates postcards, photographs, historical and literary texts, and an accompanying soundscape. Luiselli explains how reading myths with her daughter helped inspire the book, while immigration and the climate crisis provide contemporary circumstances surrounding its characters. She will discuss the novel and other literary projects at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

Diana Gabaldon told a packed Edinburgh Book Festival audience that she is writing the final novel in her Outlander series, A Blessing for a Warrior Going Out, while keeping its conclusion closely guarded. Historian Alistair Moffat discussed The North Sea: Along the Edge of Britain and the value of researching history through visits to the places where events occurred. Poet Laureate Simon Armitage presented New Cemetery, a collection shaped by walking, the COVID-19 pandemic and his father’s death, which the review praises for slowing readers down and encouraging reflection.

A review of Edinburgh International Book Festival events highlights Cory Doctorow’s warning that online platforms have been degraded by profit incentives and that an AI-market collapse could trigger austerity and political extremism. Children’s Laureate Frank Cottrell-Boyce describes troubling levels of child poverty and deprivation but finds hope in schools, volunteers and small charities. Irvine Welsh discusses his new Las Vegas-set novel, Can Nothing Save Us?, which explores the decline of American power while retaining elements of his trademark bodily shock.

Val McDermid and Geographer Royal Jo Sharp describe how a long journey led them to co-write The Door of the Seas, an epistolary novel about Scotland’s failed Darien colony in Panama. They divided the research and writing while navigating vigorous but good-humoured editorial discussions. Their novel challenges portrayals of the expedition as an inevitable fiasco, emphasizing bravery, ingenuity, political conflict and the role of King William III’s decision to block English trade and resupply. They argue that the scheme’s failure resulted from a combination of contingent events and that reimagining the story from the perspective of people living through it can complicate established narratives about Scotland’s path toward union with England.

The Scotsman’s Edinburgh Fringe roundup reviews five productions. Lifelong is an ambitious science-fiction drama about a corporation that extends human life at the cost of isolation and control, but its many storylines limit its impact. The BBC’s First Homosexual earns the strongest praise for its moving account of the BBC’s delayed 1954 documentary about homosexuality. 11½ Angry Men offers a talented comic ensemble and an absurdist spoof of 12 Angry Men, though its humor does not fully cohere. They’re Just Small Town (Northern) Lads provides a touching but predictable examination of masculinity, domestic violence and racial violence, while Departure Is My Homecoming offers an intimate, poetic exploration of Hong Kong’s fishing communities that would benefit from greater tonal and visual variation.

Several Edinburgh Fringe productions are examining AI as an increasingly present technology rather than distant science fiction. SJ Hodges’s Already Here draws on her relationship with an AI chatbot, while A Better Memory and An Echo in the Void explore AI recreations of deceased loved ones and the tension between comfort, memory and emotional entrapment. DeepFake places audiences inside a tech company deciding whether to launch generative video, highlighting deepfakes, scams, pornography, stolen likenesses and the lack of effective regulation. Joe Sellman-Leava’s Copycat takes a more direct critical stance, addressing creative-work scraping, environmental costs, exploited labor and the influence of technology leaders. Together, the shows present AI as capable of easing loneliness and enabling artistic experimentation, but also as a source of ethical, social and political risks that regulation has yet to contain.

Deaf artists and Deaf-led productions are taking prominent places at Edinburgh’s 2026 festivals, including The Singer at the Traverse and Seagull at the Edinburgh International Festival. The development reflects decades of work by organizations such as Solar Bear and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland to train and support Deaf performers. The fifth Edinburgh Deaf Festival, backed by Creative Scotland for the first time through multi-year funding, will present more than 80 events. Artists and festival leaders argue that British Sign Language should be recognized as a language capable of expressing complex stories, not merely as an accessibility tool, and hope the increased visibility leads to lasting change across Scotland’s cultural venues.

Susan Mansfield gives Gwen John: Strange Beauties at National Galleries Scotland’s Modern Two a five-star review, arguing that the exhibition’s approximately 200 paintings and drawings shift attention away from John’s dramatic biography and toward her method and sustained observation. The works reveal her progression from detailed early portraits to restrained paintings of anonymous seated women, religious figures, still lifes and subtle watercolours. The exhibition highlights John’s systematic approach to colour, materials and repeated studies of the same pose, presenting solitude and ambiguity as central qualities. Mansfield concludes that the quiet, demanding work rewards prolonged attention and offers no easy psychological or emotional answers.

The Pittenweem Arts Festival continues to expand its programme of performances and workshops while keeping visual art at its centre. The review highlights exhibitions by nearly 200 artists across venues throughout the town, with particular praise for invited artists Ella Mackay and Morvern Graham, bursary recipient Yimou Huang, the shortlisted emerging artists, the heritage-focused Weathered: Manx Beauty exhibition, and a family-mounted retrospective of master printmaker Willie Rodger. Work inspired by East Neuk landscapes and a Creative Scotland-supported mixed exhibition further broaden the festival’s offerings, which run until 8 August.

Two major Edinburgh exhibitions explore contrasting photographic practices. Sandra George’s long‑unseen archive of 1980s and 1990s Edinburgh life reveals a nuanced and respectful portrayal of communities, activism and childhood, alongside intimate self‑portraits that assert her identity as an artist. Wendy McMurdo’s survey examines the relationship between children and technology, using digital manipulation to investigate play, learning and the uncanny, while highlighting the challenges of representing a rapidly shifting digital world. Both shows underscore the significance of childhood as subject matter and the evolving impact of technology and culture on visual storytelling.