It’s hard to walk in a straight line anywhere in central Edinburgh. Huge crowds, dry, sunny weather, café tables on the pavements, tour parties, slow-moving traffic, buskers, street entertainers with wide circles of on-lookers, all fill the old streets with noise and colour. This is festival city and, so far, things are going well.

The crowds eased a bit when the Oasis fans went home. The band’s re-union concert filled Murrayfield stadium every night for four nights. That’s 70,000 extra people on the streets every night. They rather drowned out the official Festival and very nearly swamped the Fringe and its 3,700 shows.

The Edinburgh International Book Festival also got under way this week, dominated by the publication of Nicola Sturgeon’s autobiography “Frankly”. The revelations have

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