Naughty Nannies and Shocking Seniors are not new devices on the comedy circuit but remain popular crowd pleasers, which can be seen in full effect with Brendan O'Carroll's acid-tongued, tea-drinking mammy Agnes Brown.

Heiner Goebbels, the German avant-garde composer, has transposed texts from four of the most influential writers of the 20th century - T S Eliot, Maurice Blanchlot, Franz Kafka, and Samuel Beckett - and created three tableaux pieces sung by the all-male Hilliard Ensemble.

This year's International Festival slogan is "artists without borders," which is why the appearance of cultural ambassadors for Israel - the Jerusalem Quartet - provoked a pro-Palestinian demonstration outside the Queen's Hall this morning as most Palestinian citizens do not have the same freedom of movement as Israelis, living as they do within confined borders. An unusual introduction to a morning chamber recital, the pavements thronged with placards and leaflets.

The Edinburgh International concert at the Usher Hall last night should have included Schumann's Piano Concerto, but with no notification to the audience, other than a slip of paper in the programme, and no apology, the piece was changed to Beethoven's 4th Piano concerto.

Today's recital at the Queen's Hall had to be changed at the last minute due to the original performer, Ivan Moravec, being ill. However, Steven Osborne, the accomplished Scottish pianist was able to step in at short notice.

It is probably unique for the composer to take a curtain call at the premiere of an opera at the Edinburgh Festival.

Concert performances of operas are often merely static shadows of fully-staged performances, but this double-bill by the Mariinsky Opera was a revelation.

For over thirty years, Alastair Reid has deserved five stars.

Variously described as a dramatic psalm or an oratorio, this powerful exposition of the life of the biblical king came into being as the incidental music for a play.

It's been said (at least by this reviewer) that Scotland was gifted both bagpipes and haggis by the folk of the steppes of Asia, and has never seen the joke. It's certain that how Scotland came by "the national instrument" is at least as mysterious as some of its subsequent history.

Oscar Wilde's 1890 novel The Picture of Dorian Gray is a tale of the obsessive need to remain youthful and how a soul can be corrupted when that person no longer accepts the disfigurement

Alzheimer's and dementia are words most of us fear. We may know those who do or have suffered from these conditions in their later years, and dread the possibility of diagnosis for ourselves. It seems a place from which no-one returns, except briefly and with painful fleeting recognition of what they have lost.

One might expect a good-sized audience for any event with 'Independence' and 'Scotland' in the title, and thus it was. The Speigeltent was fair packed to hear the views and reflections of Professor Murray Pittock, Harry Reid and Paul Henderson Scott. All confessed themselves in favour of Scottish independence, but their versions and visions were reassuringly diverse and divergent.

I suppose the musical equivalent of "don't judge a book by its cover" could be "don't choose a band just for their name" - but thankfully, I don't subscribe to that sort of thinking. So when I came across the listing for Shooglenifty in the Fringe programme, I just thought, what a great name for a band, and signed up on the spot. And having deliberately done no more research than read the information in the programme, off I went to the Speigel Tent armed with no knowledge or preconceptions. And what a result.

Regarded by many as among the most prestigious and worthwhile prizes for literary endeavour, the James Tait Black prizes for fiction and biography are keenly noted by those with serious interest in the state of these arts.

Roland Glover ably filled in for Alan Little, "away" doing more pressing work than interviewing Misha Glenny at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. He and we needn't have worried; an hour in the company of Misha Glenny is to profit from one of the most informed and sharpest minds contemplating the state we're in.

One of the great things about the Fringe is the variety of venues you can find yourself in to watch a show. On a great night, with the right performance, even the most unlikely space ceases to matter once you get caught up in the moment. On a very wet August evening, in a pretty non-descript - but very warm - room up Surgeons Hall, Dana Gillespie pretty much managed to make me forget where I was, and transported the audience to a prohibition-era New Orleans bordello. If that seems a little unlikely, let me explain ...

Ruhe - which means "silence" in German - is an extraordinary piece of theatre. It deals with the thorny subject of Dutch citizens voluntarily collaborating with the SS Brownshirts during the second world war after Holland had been invaded by the Nazis. The performance juxtaposes a selection of Schubert's serene "partsongs" with monologues taken from transcripts of interviews with the volunteers.

The Queen's Hall chamber series today featured a father and daughter recital - Mischa Maisky on cello and Lily Maisky playing the piano.

Three acknowledged experts on China took a capacity audience at the Edinburgh Book Festival's Studio Theatre on a quick trip through China's long history, revealing many interesting new facts and offering a different perspective on some accepted ones. They neatly encapsulated thousands of years of history, without leaving the audience feeling there had been glaring omissions.