{"id":231,"date":"2009-08-08T08:54:54","date_gmt":"2009-08-08T07:54:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/?p=231"},"modified":"2010-08-19T14:06:33","modified_gmt":"2010-08-19T13:06:33","slug":"edinburgh-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/?p=231","title":{"rendered":"Edinburgh Festival and News for Summer 2009"},"content":{"rendered":"

…and a summer of Festivals continues.\u00a0\u00a0 Highlights of Edinburgh so far?<\/strong>\u00a0 The opening of a new show by John Bellany at the Open Eye gallery;\u00a0 the opening of a new gallery, the Glasshouse; and the scabrous and very funny stand-up show by Greg Behreindt, the script-writer of Sex in the City<\/em> and He’s Just Not that into You.<\/em>\u00a0 Which is odd as not normally that ‘into’ Cosmo movies.\u00a0 Best of all it’s been sunny.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But the show that is a model of how to explore ‘the idea\u00a0of a country’\u00a0\u00a0is The Discovery\u00a0of Spain at the National;\u00a0\u00a0 the curatorial work that’s gone into the exhibition and catalogue is impressive – and there’s a sense of how Spain went from the melancholy decaying empire of the 18th century to a place of duende<\/em> and the unfettered imagination that the poets of the 1930s would go out to fight for.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile I recently gave a reading at the Latitude Festival myself which was a lot of fun as could see Tricky do the ultimate crowd-surf (he was carried so far off from the stage-tent that he emerged in a field somewhere and the concert was over); Tequila Oil <\/a>has been reviewed by the Independent, Guardian and Financial Times –\u00a0and by Top Gear Magazine who said I was a good writer but clearly a lousy driver.<\/p>\n

Also returned to Peru and the Inca site\u00a0of Llactapata<\/a><\/strong> for a National Geographic and PBS Nova production:\u00a0 we filmed there at dawn on\u00a0June solstice as the sun shone down the narrow passageway designed to mark that day.\u00a0 Then I had to do a piece to camera on what it all meant.<\/p>\n

50 Wonders of the World <\/a>has just been published\u00a0 by Quercus for \u00a325.\u00a0 Which is a bargain, as\u00a0it’s a handsome and very large book, which with a little carpentry could actually be used as a coffee table, not just on it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…and a summer of Festivals continues.\u00a0\u00a0 Highlights of Edinburgh so far?\u00a0 The opening of a new show by John Bellany at the Open Eye gallery;\u00a0 the opening of a new gallery, the Glasshouse; and the scabrous and very funny stand-up show by Greg Behreindt, the script-writer of Sex in the City and He’s Just Not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,4,7,1,3],"tags":[13],"class_list":["post-231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-festivals","category-news","category-peru","category-uncategorized","category-travel","tag-llactapata"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=231"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":470,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231\/revisions\/470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}