English Cabaret were delighted to receive a letter of support from No 10 Downing Street ahead of their Edinburgh shows. Written on behalf of prime minister Keir Starmer it wished us 'every success' celebrating the protections of ECHR75 with performances of Dreams of Peace & Freedom at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 'which welcomes 'thousands of visitors from across the globe'. We are conscious of how the ECHR inspires the PM, who said to the EPC last July, that he draws 'strength from it and value from it everyday'.

This summer we are telling a very Scottish story, in the birthplace of the Scot's born ECHR artisan. reinforcing the idea of two enlightened gifts Scotland has made to the world - The European Convention on Human Rights and The Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Although a regional instrument of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the ECHR has inspired the world by protecting the rights and freedoms of a Continent and enforcing that protection with a Court. It is recognised to be predominantly the work of its two ‘artisans’ Frenchman Pierre Henri Teitgen and Scot David Maxwell Fyfe. But it was David, a prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, who made the early drafts of the list of protections that war-torn Europe needed. A list forged from the laws of nature on which the Scottish Enlightenment shone a light - which shaped his childhood education. You can read more about David and the law of nature in Songs of the People's latest blog.

The Edinburgh International Festival was staged in response to war, and the Fringe erupted in its light. Two hundred and forty years earlier Edinburgh and Scotland had felt the shock of the Act of Union. Scotland was no longer an independent sovereign nation and much of the mechanics of government moved to local. The result was extraordinary. A society was reborn from spontaneous individual action. It embraced a freedom of thought, which was reflected in a freedom of ideas - and those ideas spread worldwide.

Scotland became a sovereign nation of the mind, and Edinburgh the ‘Athens of the north.’ Which was why after the war, all nations and all people were drawn to Edinburgh - to explore, express and experiment. Our modern world and its values have been forged in the Fringe more than in any other cauldron: tolerance, diversity, a sense of equal opportunity, and an open door has underpinned the best of the changes seen since the war.

You can’t claim that these gifts are perfect - but the world would have been poorer without them. This year we are telling the story of the ECHR on the Fringe. And if the prime minister is right, 'thousands of people from across the globe ' will be there to hear - and share his inspiration.

Book tickets to Dreams of Peace & Freedom at C alto daily from 11th-24th August at 13:55