Pentlands Book Festival: 26 Oct – 25 Nov 2026

Edinburgh’s Literary Heritage

Wednesday 11 November 2026, 7.30pm.  Porteous, 589 Lanark Road, Juniper Green, EH14 5DA   

Dr Kate Stephenson is an Edinburgh-based social historian and writer.  She has an academic background in clothing history – writing her PhD on the impact of social and educational change on the appearance of schoolchildren.  She later turned this into a book with Exeter University Press as A Cultural History of School Uniform.  Today she still writes on the subject, including for HistoryExtra and Selvedge magazines.  More recently, she has focused her research on the material culture of sex, particularly the history of condoms, and she has spoken extensively on the subject, including on History Hit, BBC Alba and BBC Radio 4.

Over the last two years she has worked with Pen & Sword to produce two books under their White Owl imprint: The Book-Lover’s Guide to Edinburgh, which was released in January 2026, and The History of the Greyhound (release date to be confirmed).  It is the former of these that she will talking about, considering Edinburgh’s strong literary links and discussing the lives, work, and occasional scandals of some of the authors and poets that did and did not make the book.