Just in time for Christmas, news arrives about next year's Edinburgh International Festival. It will run from August 14 to September 6, its usual slot but about as late in date terms as it ever is.
More interesting, perhaps is the revealing of a theme of "that extraordinary moment in Scottish history, the Scottish Enlightenment - setting it in contemporary and often surprising contexts."
No more information at present - the programme is revealed on March 25 - but it is an intriguing prospect. I wonder what those who used to complain about the lack of Scottish content in the Festival will have to say about the Australian director's approach to this shibboleth of Scottish (and especially Edinburgh's) cultural heritage? Keith Bruce
Texas frontwoman Sharleen Spiteri, widely ackowledged to be one of the most astute women in the world of Scots pop, looked genuinely stunned to receive an award for outstanging achievement at Saturday night's charity bash in aid of Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy in Scotland at Glasgow's Old Fruitmarket. That was at least partly due to the suprise appearance of comedian Peter Kay as the celebrity presenter of the award.
This was the little coup which the organisers of the awards had kept up their sleeves for the night, and it added a dramatic ingrediant to what was a highly successful evening. In these credit crunch times, it is perhaps unsurprising that the night did not raise quite as much as the record-breaking 1997 event, but £93,000 was still an impressive total of funds for the charity.
Next year there will be at least one new face on the platform as emcee Jay Crawford of Real Radio is stepping down after hosting the event since its inception. Keith Bruce
When our critic William Russell filed his review of Imagine This at the New London Theatre this week, I was immediately curious to read what other critics thought.
The show had "possible disaster" written all over it in neon. A musical set in the Warsaw ghetto and about the Holocaust looked like being for real what Mel Brooks lampooned in The Producers - and Bill, our former London editor and cinema critic, does not mince his words when he finds a show wanting.
However, Mr Russell found much to admire in the production, even if parts of it were less successful, and was far from at his acerbic worst. Now that the other reviews have been published, I note that such London title luminaries as Michael Billington in the Guardian and Charles Spencer in the Daily Telegraph have been very much of the same mind. Keith Bruce
Former director of London's National Theatre, Sir Richard Eyre found time to be at the Edinburgh premiere of Mary Poppins, the musical he directed for fellow knight Sir Cameron Mackintosh. This was a sign of his loyalty to the capital, where his theatre career began at Edinburgh's Royal Lyceum.
Eyre's post-National work is on an impressive trajectory with a hit musical and a hit film, the adaptation of Zoe Heller's novel Notes on a Scandal under his belt. His new film, The Other Man, which stars Liam Neeson, Laura Linney, and Antonia Banderas and is based on a short story by German writer Bernard Schlink, is screening at the London Film Festival and looks an astute follow-up.
Next year, Sir Richard will be working at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, directing volatile Romanian soprano Angela Gheorghiu in a new production of Bizet's Carmen. This time she's in the title role, but when she was Micaela for Franco Zeffirelli back in 1996 she had a famous falling out with the Met management over a blonde wig.
Speaking to me after seeing Mary Poppins successfully go up on Tuesday, the experience theatrical knight admitted that he was already feeling nervous about the New York gig. As well he might. Keith Bruce
I am here to cover the opening of the first Scottish presence at this, the 11th Venice Biennale of Architecture. While perhaps not as well known as the other Biennale based in this ancient and beautiful canal-city, the contemporary art festival, this Biennale is considered hugely important for the world of architecture. "It's the Cannes of architecture", Gareth Hoskins, the leading Scottish architect, told me .
The flights in and the streets and vaporettos (water taxis) are packed with delegates and architects, designers and building-nerds, design and architecture trade press writers, as well as the usual mix of tourists and local (bemused) Venetians.
I just registered as a journalist at the vast Arsenale – where the Venetians once built their formidable fleets – and the queues were very long. The names, for the architecture world, are big: Frank Gehry, the architect responsible for Bilbao's Guggenheim, is picking up a Golden Lion award for his lifetime achievement here on Saturday.
Later today Gathering Space, the Scottish pavilion, designed by Gareth Hoskins, will officially open in the plaza just outside the main railway station here. I saw it lit up last night as I came in to the city: it did look fantastic. A tall and slightly twisted set of stairs, with an alcove cut inside it, it is certainly eye catching. Made in Scots larch, its wooden frame stands out starkly against the Venetian marble, plaster and red brick. Scotland's show is not an official pavilion – it is almost a "fringe" event, but the opening party tomorrow night should be packed and interest appears to be high. There will be a big debate staged at it tomorrow, from which I will report.
Later today I am going to look around some of the official national pavilions, check out a couple of speeches, and attend the opening of Scotland's show.
I will try and get a hang of this multi-media age and file some audio from the event, too.
The Edinburgh International Book Festival does not get started until this coming Saturday - the 9th of August -but yesterday an announcement was made which affects its autumn programming (yes, the book festival exists outside its August time slot).
David Malouf, the Australian novelist, short story writer and poet, is to be the second Muriel Spark International Fellow - the award established by the Scottish Arts Council in 2004. The first fellow was Margaret Atwood.
During his four week stay in Scotland from mid-September to mid-October, Malouf will appear in a Meet the Author event at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh as part of the EIBF's autumn programme; deliver a public lecture hosted by the University of Edinburgh; give a masterclass to students of Creative Writing at the University of St Andrew's School of English; and appear at an event at the Scottish Poetry Library.
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