To celebrate LGBT History Month, I want to look back at an important moment from Scotland’s recent history. Eight years ago this month, on the 4th of February 2014, the Scottish Parliament passed a momentous piece of legislation that campaigners had been working towards for decades.

Little is known about Ellen and Margaret, two “Moorish lassies” who worked as ladies in waiting to the daughter of King James IV in the early 1500s. We don’t even know their real names, because “Ellen” and “Margaret” were the names given to them after they were baptised as Christians. But we do know that these two African women held prominent positions in service at the royal court.

This year wasn’t my first first Fringe, of course – as a lifelong Edinburgher, I’ve been going to things in the festival since before I can remember – but it was my first as a participant. After a rough couple of years in tourism, joining in the return of the festival with my LGBTQ+ history tour was the perfect way to get back out guiding again and remind myself why I love this job so much.

As a theatre-lover who grew up in Edinburgh, August is my favourite time of year. When the festival rolls around, we have the enormous privilege of the world’s largest arts festival arriving on our doorsteps. The whole city bursts to life almost overnight – the fire jugglers and unicyclists spring up on the cobbles of the Royal Mile, the back room of almost every pub becomes a theatre, and the buzz of thousands of hopeful performers fills the air.

Watching a community protect their neighbours from deportation in Glasgow made me want to write about how Scotland has been shaped by migration. It’s influenced everything about our country as we know it, from people moving across continents thousands of years ago right up to our most recent new Scots.

With little to do except explore my own city, I’ve been able to dedicate time to wandering down new closes, digging up new stories for tours and discovering figures from Scottish history whom I’d never heard of before. Now that things are finally starting to open up again, I’m incredibly excited to be launching a new series of walking tours throughout the month of May: Edinburgh’s Untold Stories.

Malvina Wells was born into chattel slavery in Carriacou, Grenada around 1804 and died in Edinburgh in 1887. She’s the only known person buried in Edinburgh who was born enslaved, although it is likely there are others. Although the information we have about her is sparse, it points to a remarkable life.

I’ve always loved a good walk. Walking immerses you in a place, and Edinburgh has no shortage of beauty to explore on foot. I always recommend walking aimlessly as a way to discover the city. When you wander down the closes of the Royal Mile or feel the pull of Edinburgh’s green spaces, without a destination or a deadline, you find the most magical spots and notice the little things.

Frederick Douglass was one of the most prominent African American abolitionist voices of the nineteenth century, and many people will be familiar with his powerful speeches denouncing the horrors of slavery. Fewer people are aware that he made several visits to Edinburgh and that you can still find numerous places in the city where he made public speeches or visited local abolitionists.

Because women throughout history have mostly been excluded from male-dominated spheres of power like politics and higher education, their more domestic revolutions were often overlooked. We tend to associate early women’s rights activism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with suffrage campaigns, but women at all levels of society were also engaged with the project of improving daily life.

This week, I wanted to take a look at one of Edinburgh’s amazing women: Elizabeth “Bessie” Watson. She was a women’s suffrage activist from the age of just nine, and a pioneering bagpiper at a time when very few women played the pipes. Her legacy can still be felt today, so how did a wee girl from Edinburgh go on to make such an impact?

This Sunday, 21st of February, is International Tourist Guides Day, and since the theme this year is rural tourism and storytelling it seems like the perfect time to write about Scottish folklore! Although folkloric tales exist all over the country, to me they feel particularly bound up with the landscapes and atmosphere of the Scottish Highlands.

In 1869, the first women admitted to any British university began studying medicine at Edinburgh. They fought hard to be allowed to study at all and excelled in their courses, but in 1873 they were denied the right to graduate. Most of them went on to study elsewhere in Europe and returned as some of the first women doctors in Britain. So who were these pioneering women, and how did they end up becoming the country’s first female medical students?

The study and practice of medicine has been a part of Edinburgh’s history for centuries, and the city’s medical school is still an important centre of teaching today. There have been professional organisations for medical practitioners in the city for over 500 years.

Burns Night is celebrated on the 25th of January both in Scotland and by members of the Scottish diaspora around the world, and traditionally it involves eating some haggis, reciting some Burns poetry and general Scottish merriment (read: drinking). But Robert Burns himself died in 1796, so what made him such an enduring figure in Scottish culture that we still celebrate his birthday over 200 years later?

Back in the heady days of summer 2020, when lockdown was a novelty rather than a way of life, I decided to use a couple of big walks to visit all the closes of the Royal Mile. A “close” (with a hard S) is a narrow alleyway running between buildings, and the historic heart of Edinburgh is packed with them.

For as long as Edinburgh has existed, LGBTQ+ people have walked the city’s streets. Their stories can be harder to uncover, because for most of history people had to hide their identities from the eyes of society, but once you start digging you find a wealth of LGBTQ+ experiences buried in the fabric of the city.

I’ve been working away behind the scenes on some virtual tours in Edinburgh, since we’re all still stuck at home. Check out my tour of Holyrood Park!

Well, 2020 was shaping up to be a pretty fun year until about six weeks ago! By now, I should already have been out on the road showing people around Scotland – just last week, I should have been taking a family around the historic abbeys and grand houses of the Scottish Borders. But 2020 isn’t like other years, so instead I’m sitting at home (like most of the rest of the world) and trying to figure out ways to carry on doing what I love.