The mental health award paying tribute to a much-missed Edinburgh festival writer

Anna Arthur explains why an Edinburgh Fringe award is being presented in memory of her partner, Tim Cornwell

Arts journalist Tim Cornwell, who died in 2022.

Every June, the annual ritual unfolded. The Scotsman's Edinburgh festivals editor would approach Tim Cornwell, formerly the Scotsman’s arts correspondent but now living in London, with a question: would he rejoin the ranks of hard-working Fringe reviewers? And every year, Tim would embark on an epic journey of indecision. Was he too old for this? Would it be utterly absurd to cycle around Edinburgh, catching a mind-boggling four or five shows a day? Barely eating, hardly sleeping and feeling increasingly anxious. Come 2022 and the stage was set for yet another round of deliberation, but this time Tim had ruptured his Achilles tendon, and with a leg in plaster he could not seriously consider covering the Fringe on crutches.

The decision was taken out of his hands. He died of a pulmonary embolism on 31 May, in a hotel in Rothbury, Northumberland, returning home from a trip to Forres to visit his daughter and her husband and their child. He was 59.

We had just spend the best part of two years living in the family home in Cornwall, where Tim had been editing A Private Spy, the collection of letters from his father David, aka John Le Carre. The trip to Scotland was a reward for handing the completed manuscript to the publisher, a feat that at times felt as if it would never be achieved. Tim was born in Bonn, Germany, in 1962, the year before the publication of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, when his father was working officially as a second secretary at the British Embassy and covertly for MI6.

Tim moved to Scotland from the US to become the Scotsman’s deputy foreign editor, and from 2004 its arts correspondent. It was a natural fit. With a deep-rooted love for theatre and opera, and a profound appreciation of Middle Eastern art and the Scottish Colourists, in particular, he thrived in the company of actors and artists. But above all, covering the Edinburgh Fringe was the highlight of his year.

Tim is remembered by his colleagues as a gently mischievous, intelligent and amiable journalist who was always searching for an angle for a news story. His mischievousness often led to dramatic Fringe confrontations. I first encountered him in 2004, when I was a PR for a production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest starring Christian Slater and Frances Barber. Performances were cancelled supposedly due to chicken pox, but Tim, refusing to believe the story, gatecrashed rehearsals, and the show’s producer, Nica Burns, had to order him out of the Assembly Rooms. I was the one who had to escort him from the premises, little knowing I would spend the last six years of his life with him.

From then onwards, Tim became an integral fixture of the Edinburgh scene. For me, and countless others, his remarkable talent for unearthing the extraordinary amid the festival's delightful chaos was matched only by his finely honed bullshit detector.

Yet, beneath the surface of his luminous writing, he had long grappled with his personal demons. His mental health issues were regular fixture - an insidious undercurrent that coursed through his life. His mother would say, about Tim, that “he got into a state” very easily. I suppose, looking back on his mental health history, you could say that “getting into a state” was a symptom of something.

In 2005, Tim suffered a manic episode that led to his first hospitalisation. However, it was in 2020 that he experienced his most severe episode yet. Faced with the double burden of the fear of COVID and his reluctance to rely on lithium as a treatment, his mental health took a turn for the worse. This time, the diagnosis was definitive, and he finally had a label: bipolar disorder. It was a pivotal moment that marked a new chapter in his life, in both our lives, one that would require newfound understanding and support as we navigated the complexities of his condition.

He had always been very open about his mental health struggles. Alongside his work as an arts journalist, he was on the judging panel for the Mental Health Foundation Fringe Award, an annual award for the most compelling show about mental health at the Edinburgh Fringe, presented by one of the UK’s biggest mental health charities. As someone who navigated the labyrinth of mental health Tim saw the award as a profound validation of the struggles and triumphs endured by countless individuals facing mental health challenges. Reviewing the shows entered for it was not always easy, but oddly at times he experienced a relief that his problems were not unique to him.

Tim’s satirical novel The Third Twin, about the craziness of the Edinburgh festivals and a pre-digital newspaper bearing more than a passing resemblance to the Scotsman, may one day be published. In the meantime, his legacy and his love of Edinburgh in August live on in the Mental Health Foundation Fringe Award, which is to be sponsored for the next three years by the Cornwell Charitable Trust, a charity set up by Tim’s family.

The Mental Health Foundation Fringe Award is presented by the Mental Health Foundation in partnership with the Scotsman, with support from the Cornwell Charitable Trust. Find out more here. The award is dedicated to Tim’s memory.