In the cramped entrance area of St Columba’s by the Castle, with the queue for the next session already forming, Richard Demarco, CBE, is in full flow when someone tells him, ‘Keep your voice down!’
Newly turned 96, Demarco had already overrun his slot at ScotlandsFest, discussing Demarco’s Europe, his third book with writer Roddy Martine, published by Luath Press.
Afterwards, as he signed copies, he drew each person in the long queue into conversation, following his familiar, meandering train of thought and apparently oblivious to the audience waiting to get in. Even after being ushered out, he continued for another hour, inscribing books, talking to anyone who would listen and expounding the ideas that have driven his life’s work.
The book completes a trilogy the pair have produced over the past three years. Martine believes it brings the project to a natural conclusion, despite occasional talk of another volume (perhaps Demarco’s Universe?). Gavin McDougall of Luath introduced the session, noting that ScotlandsFest, now in its ninth year, seeks to represent ‘the many Scotlands’.
For Demarco, however, his Scotland is inextricably linked to Europe, and he believes the festival should reflect that relationship.
‘Overwhelmed by memories’
Demarco began by admitting that he felt ‘overwhelmed by memories’. Born in 1930, he told the audience that ‘practically all my friends are dead’ and that there is ‘no one to speak to’ about the early festivals.
Demarco is among the last people alive to have attended every Festival since 1947. Each month, he said, brings fresh losses among his old collaborators. He described himself as a survivor, but said he thinks every day about ‘what happens after I die?’ That question is closely bound up with his archive.
This year has brought Demarco two further blows: the death of his wife, Anne, and the departure of his archive from Summerhall to Łódź in Poland, described in the room as the ‘export’ of the collection. Against that background, it was striking to see him in such good form, still passionately arguing for the Festival’s original vision.
He dates the Edinburgh Festival’s genuine existence to roughly forty years from 1947. The Festival of today, he believes, is thin by comparison, with the visual arts, which he did so much to establish within the Festival and Fringe during the 1970s, pushed to the margins. His head dropped into his hands more than once as he spoke.
At other times, he banged the floor with his stick to emphasise his points.
‘I’m 100% in Europe’
The Festival, Demarco explained, grew directly out of the Second World War, conceived as a way of healing some of its wounds. ‘The horror of war’ dominated his childhood, which is why 1947 had such an effect on him. Edinburgh, a city he had found unwelcoming, became in his eyes the ‘European capital of culture’, ‘indeed the world’. He remains ‘still committed’ to that early idea, despite asking himself ‘what the hell am I doing at 96?’. Europe remains central to how he sees Scotland and himself.
‘I’ve had to disguise myself all my life’, he said, explaining that adopting the English name Richard rather than Riccardo amounted to ‘living a lie’. He wanted ‘nothing to do with the British Empire’, but never felt entirely at home in Britain. ‘I didn’t fit into the British way of life’, he said. Edinburgh then had few immigrants, while his Italian and Catholic background, and his schooling at Holy Cross Academy, marked him out. That sense of marginalisation, he said, ‘hurts him deeply’ still. Scotland remains, in his words, ‘a difficult country to feel fully European in’.
His view has not softened with age. Scotland is ‘dead in the water without a European connection’. He is sceptical of the ‘special relationship’ between the United States and United Kingdom and insists: ‘I’m 100% in Europe’. He asked the audience: ‘don’t you want to be the world capital of culture?’ He said he had spent his ‘whole bloody life’ trying to achieve that for Edinburgh.
‘Buried away’
The archive has become part of that story. In 1995 Demarco sold a substantial body of material to the National Galleries of Scotland, but little has been done with it since. Much of the material, he said, is ‘buried away’ and out of reach. For Demarco, work that cannot be accessed is ‘no use’ at all. The collection now has ‘nothing to do with me’, he said. He has ‘no access to it’ himself.
His wider archive is now in Poland. Valued at £75 million and moved out of Summerhall in five lorries, it has gone to a team of Polish art historians who, according to Demarco, are dealing with it properly. He remains deeply disappointed that Scotland did not want it.
Different views of the Festival
Roddy Martine struck a rather different note. He recalled a 1970s trip to the United States that revealed Demarco’s ‘extraordinary reach’. His name was known far beyond Scotland, although that prominence has faded since its peak in the 1970s and 1980s.
Martine’s own break into journalism came through a ‘scoop’ interview with broadcaster David Frost. Edinburgh, he said, was transformed by the Festival. For three weeks each year, the city stopped being ‘a dark and great place’ and became ‘buzzing’.
Demarco became ‘part of my life’ for Martine back in the 1960s. The pair were given three months to write Demarco’s Edinburgh in time for the 2023 Festival. It was not, Martine admitted, ‘quite the book we set out to write’, but he believes it uncovered a story worth telling. The latest volume focuses on Scotland’s cultural pull on Europe and Europe’s pull on Scotland.
Unlike Demarco, Martine feels the Festival is ‘still going strong’; that worthwhile performances are still going on every year. He credits Demarco with helping put it on the map through the visual arts. He called it ‘a tragedy’ that the archive left Scotland, but was relieved that it is now properly looked after.
‘A terrible pain of loss’
Those who came to hear the two men were mostly familiar faces, a loyal and dwindling group well used to Demarco’s repetitions and rhetorical habits. He knows this, and is frustrated by the difficulty of reaching anyone beyond that circle.
He believes the official International Festival is now drowned out by the Fringe. Only around the Usher Hall, he pointed out, do EIF posters still appear. Elsewhere, the lamp posts and hoardings belong to the Fringe. Demarco described himself as ‘suffering from a terrible pain of loss’, grieving the people, the art and the Festival he remembers.
His closing point returned to the war. The history of the Festival, he said, is ‘wedded’ to the war that produced it. Demarco’s Europe records that connection while there is still someone alive who can tell the story firsthand. What happens to the archive now is largely beyond his control. It is in Łódź, roughly a hundred miles from a border he watches with more than a historian’s interest-that with Ukraine.
For Demarco, the Festival remains unfinished business. At 96, he is still arguing about what it was, what it became, and what it might have been.
