Brian McMaster has been programming the Edinburgh Festival since 1992. He’s constantly tinkering with ways to bring in unlikely audiences. “It is this engagement with the audience that makes the International Festival seem so alive. McMaster’s tenure has coincided with increasing collaboration between all the festivals, so that there is growing self-assurance to the city. Once, almost every resident would meet August with a scowl, fleeing if they could, but now only the most curmudgeonly swears at the thesps on the high street. McMaster has brought us in, and without dumbing down.”